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. 


By  ANNA  FULLER 


A  Literary  Courtship :  Under  the  Auspices  of 
Pike's  Peak.  26th  thousand.  16°  .  $1.25 

A  Venetian  June.  Illustrated,  zoth  thou- 
sand. 16° $1-25 

Peak  and  Prairie:  From  a  Colorado  Sketch- 
Book.  Illustrated.  ?th  thousand.  16°.  $1.25 

Pratt  Portraits  :  Sketched  in  a  New  Eng- 
land Suburb.  Illustrated,  nth  thousand. 
16' $1.50 

One  of  the  Pilgrims.  A  Bank  Story.  $th 
thousand.  16° .  .  .  .  .  $1.25 

Katherine  Day    12°    .        .        .        .        $1.50 


KATHERINE 
DAY 

BY  ANNA  FULLER 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW   YORK   AND  LONDON 

Cbe   IciiicKecbocfcer   press 

1901 


COPYRIGHT,  JUNK,  1901 

BY 
ANNA    FULLER 


~bc  *nichei bocfcet  prcsa,  flew  Jporfc 


222S362 


CONTENTS 

PART  I 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — THE  LITTLE  ORATOR         .         .         .  .         3 

II. — A  THANKLESS  TASK          .         .         .         ,         .       13 

III. — To  SOME  GOOD  END 27 

IV. — THE  PRIZE  FISH       .         .         ...         .  ,     .       40 

V. — A  TRIAL  OF  STRENGTH     .         .  -57 

VI.— HIGH  TEA         . 72 

VII. — ALMOST  A  QUARREL          .         .  .         -85 

VIII. — FATHER  AND  DAUGHTER  .         .         .         .97 

IX. — A  VISION  OP  THE  NIGHT          .         .         . .       .     108 

X. — A  CAPITULATION       «...         .         .         .         .119 

XI. — THE  CLOSED  DOOR  .         .         .         .         .         .     134 

PART  II 

I. — A  YOUNG  IDEALIST           .        .-.    .     .         .         .  I4j 

II. — OBSTACLES         .         .         .                  .         .         .  I5g 

III. — GARDEN  COUNSELS    .         .      •  .         .         .         .  170 

IV.— TOM  .         .         .         .  '      ,         .         .         .180 

V. — PARTNERS          .         .         . ,       ;.        .         .         .  195 

VI. — PAUL 207 

VII. — CONFIDENCES     .......  220 

VIII. — UNDER  FULL  SAIL   .                  .  229 

IX. — A  SUMMONS     .          ......  240 

X. — THE  DOG  IN  THE  MANGER       ....  255 

XI. — A  THROW  FOR  LIFE          .....  267 


vi  Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XII. — THE  ONE  GRACE 281 

XIII. — BROTHER  AND  SISTER             .         .         .          .  295 

XIV. — THE  RUNAWAY       ......  307 

XV. — AT  CROSS  PURPOSES 324 

XVI. — QUICKSANDS             ......  336 

XVII. — THE  CATASTROPHE          .....  352 

PART  III 

I.— AT  WORK       .         .         .         .         .         .         .371 

II. — RETROSPECT            ......  382 

III. — THE  DIFFERENCE            .....  393 

IV. — FELLOW  PRISONERS        .....  409 

V. — ALL  OR  NOTHING            .....  423 

VI. — A  VINDICATION       ......  439 

VII. — IN  BACHELOR  QUARTERS       ....  452 

VIII. — A  BLEAK  CORNER          .....  466 

IX. — READJUSTMENTS     ......  474 

X. — THE  LITTLE  SOLDIER     .....  488 

XI. — SMOULDERING  EMBERS            ....  496 

XII. — CONFLICT        .......  509 

XIII. — FLIGHT 528 

XIV.— THE  LITTLE  BLACK  FIGURE           .         .         .  540 

XV. — TOM'S  LETTER        ......  555 

XVI. — MONT  ST.  MICHEL          ......  571 

XVII. — WINNY'S  MECCA     .         .         .                -. •/  583 

XVIII.— THE  BIRD  OF  TIME        .         .         .         ;.  o     .  597 

XIX. — A  BIRTHDAY  608 


PART   I 

"  Shall  not  God  stoop  the  kindlier  to  His  work 

Now  that  the  hand  He  trusted  to  receive 
And  hold  it,  lets  the  treasure  fall  perforce  ? " 


THE     LITTLE     ORATOR 

"  The  year  's  at  the  spring, 
And  day  's  at  the  morn; 
Morning  's  at  seven." 

Romans,  countrymen,  lend  me  your 
ears ! ' ' 

The  shrill,  childish  voice  was  thin  as  the  sunbeam 
which  had  slipped  through  a  crack  in  the  wide  roof, 
touching,  with  its  long,  bright  finger,  the  tiny  crea- 
ture, perched  upon  the  great  central  cross-timber  of 
the  barn.  Far  below,  on  the  broad,  hay-strewn 
floor,  stood  a  bevy  of  children,  their  upturned  faces 
showing  white  against  a  dusky  background  as  they 
gazed,  in  pleasurable  trepidation,  at  the  bit  of  hu- 
manity haranguing  them  from  that  dizzy  height. 

There  had  been  a  thunder-storm,  and  the  whole 
Sunday-school  picnic  had  been  driven  into  the  barn 
for  shelter,  the  teachers  taking  refuge  in  the  farm- 
house hard  by.  This,  indeed,  they  could  do  with 
an  easy  conscience,  assured  that  no  safer  playground 
could  have  been  devised  for  the  little  ones  than  the 
great  country  barn,  its  shadowy  spaces  sweet  with 
hay  and  dim  with  cobwebs. 

The  children  were  playing  "  Folloiv-your-leader," 
and  while  they  played,  unheeding,  the  thud  of  the 


4  Katharine  Day 

rain  had  ceased  upon  the  broad  roof,  the  birds  out- 
side had  set  up  their  little  chirp  of  thanksgiving, 
and  the  sunshine  was  lying,  warm  and  bright, 
across  the  threshold  of  the  wide  doorway. 

A  few  minutes  ago  one  of  the  big  boys  had 
"stumped"  the  other  children  by  crawling  cau- 
tiously, on  hands  and  knees,  across  the  topmost 
beam.  He  had  climbed  down  again  over  the  hay, 
acknowledged  "leader"  in  the  game.  Scarcely  was 
he  on  the  floor,  however,  prepared  to  lord  it  over  the 
other  children  after  the  manner  of  big  boys,  when,  lo! 
a  tiny  figure  had  appeared,  following  on  his  adven- 
turous path.  Little  Katherine  Day  had  slipped 
from  rmong  them  while  all  eyes  were  turned  upon 
the  leader.  With  catlike  agility  she  had  gone  hand 
over  hand  up  the  perpendicular  ladder  fastened 
firmly  to  one  of  the  upright  supporting  timbers. 
From  the  first  loft  she  had  partly  clambered,  partly 
tumbled,  up  the  sides  of  the  great  mountains  of  hay 
that  reared  their  crests  on  a  level  with  the  central 
beam.  While  all  eyes  were  watching  the  .descent  of 
the  conquering  hero  she  had  crawled  out  upon  that 
perilous  way,  and  crouched  there,  with  fiercely  beat- 
ing heart,  conscious,  in  all  her  little  quaking  body,  of 
the  yawning  depths  below. 

Suddenly  a  face  looked  up,  another,  and  another, 
and  an  awestruck  murmur  reached  her  ears.  It 
was  elixir  to  the  child's  spirit.  She  no  longer  trem- 
bled ;  she  was  conscious  only  of  a  great  joy  and 
exultation.  Slowly  and  steadily  she  drew  herself 
erect  and  stood  firmly  upon  her  feet.  The  round- 
comb  which  held  her  hair  in  place  loosed  itself  and  fell, 
breaking  in  a  dozen  fragments  on  the  floor  twenty  feet 
below.  The  child  tossed  her  hair  back  with  as  free 


The  Little  Orator  5 

a  movement  as  if  her  feet  had  been  planted  upon 
the  nursery  floor  ;  and,  lifting  up  her  thin  young 
voice,  she  spoke  the  words  which  the  great  poet  has 
put  into  the  mouth  of  one  who  was  not  more  soar- 
ingly  ambitious  than  the  little  Yankee  girl  who  had 
them  from  the  reading-book. 

"Friends,  Romans,  countrymen,  lend  me  your 
ears ! ' ' 

The  high,  piping  challenge  was  a  grateful  outlet  to 
her  exultation.  But,  alas!  as  she  opened  her  lips  to 
repeat  the  words,  a  sharp,  incisive  voice  cut  across 
them  like  a  knife. 

"Come,  children,  the  rain  is  over.  Come  out-of- 
doors!" 

Cousin  Elmira,  the  arbiter  of  little  Katherine's 
childish  destinies,  stood,  a  tall,  spare  figure,  right  in 
the  track  of  the  sunshine. 

The  children  glanced  furtively  at  one  another,  and 
then,  as  by  one  accord,  every  face  was  turned  again 
upward.  Miss  Faxon  followed  the  direction  of 
their  eyes,  and  her  countenance  changed, — but  not 
with  the  mortal  terror  that  would  have  clutched  at 
a  mother's  heart.  Outraged  authority  flushed  the 
pale  cheek,  and  the  voice  was  stern  and  steady  in 
which  she  commanded:  "  Katherine,  come  down 
directly — directly!  Do  you  hear?" 

The  child  turned  and  walked  across  the  beam. 
She,  too,  was  oblivious  of  peril,  conscious  only  of 
coming  disgrace  and  retribution,  yet  facing  it  pluck- 
ily  enough  when,  a  few  minutes  later,  she  stood,  a 
sorry  little  figure,  more  defiant  than  afraid,  before 
her  indignant  guardian.  And  indeed  one  need 
hardly  have  been  a  Cousin  Elmira  to  experience  in- 
dignation at  the  wreck  of  all  the  dainty  order  which 


6  Katharine  Day 

had  been  the  work  of  her  careful  Tiands.  The  rather 
ugly  pattern  of  the  mousseline-de-laine  frock  was 
half  hidden  under  a  gray  network  of  cobwebs  and 
dust;  the  dishevelled  hair  bristled  with  long  wisps  of 
hay ;  face  and  hands  were  soiled  and  scratched. 

Miss  Faxon  never  wasted  words,  but  her  judg- 
ments were  swift  and  irresistible  Seizing  one  of 
the  grimy  little  hands  with  no  gentle  grasp,  and 
looking  back  to  bid  the  other  children  play  out-of- 
doors,  she  led  the  culprit  across  the  grassy  space  to 
the  rear  of  the  farmhouse. 

"Mrs.  Stevens,"  she  asked,  as  they  stepped  into 
the  kitchen,  where  that  worthy  woman  was  engaged 
in  throwing  soft-soap  upon  her  hearth, — "Mrs.  Ste- 
vens, have  you  got  a  room  where  a  very  naughty 
girl  would  not  be  likely  to  get  into  mischief? " 

"Sakes  alive!  What  a  looking  child!"  cried  the 
impromptu  hostess.  "What  under  the  canopy  has 
happened  to  her?" 

"Nothing  but  her  tomboy  tricks.  I  found  her 
performing  on  the  highest  beam  in  your  barn." 

"On  the  big,  middle  beam?"  cried  the  woman, 
horror-struck.  Then,  dropping  her  voice  to  a  rever- 
ent pitch:  "The  Lord  must  have  preserved  her  Him- 
self!— to  some  good  end,  let  us  hope,"  she  added, 
piously. 

Little  Katherine  lifted  her  stormy  eyes  to  the 
motherly  face.  She  longed,  with  all  her  eager 
childish  heart,  to  run  and  hide  her  head  in  the  wo- 
man's ample  skirts  and  sob  out  all  her  misery.  But 
life,  in  the  presence  of  her  elders,  was  a  discipline 
and  repression,  and  little  Katherine  only  stood,  silent 
and  constrained,  while  the  two  women  brushed  her 
off,  and  washed  her  hands  at  the  sink;  after  which 


The  Little  Orator  7 

they  proceeded  to  complete  her  discomfiture  by 
tying  the  rebellious  hair  back  with  an  ignominious 
piece  of  black  tape. 

"Let  her  stay  right  here  along  o'  me,"  kind  Mrs. 
Stevens  urged.  "  I  'm  used  to  children,  and  she 
won't  be  a  mite  of  trouble." 

But  no!  Solitary  confinement  was  Cousin  El- 
mira's  sovereign  penalty  for  childish  misdemeanors, 
and  accordingly  little  Katherine  was  led  up-stairs  to 
the  best  bedroom.  Here  Mrs.  Stevens  generously 
opened  all  four  of  the  windows  and  flung  back  the 
green  blinds,  letting  the  sun  stream  in  upon  her 
sacred  ingrain  carpet  and  the  cherished  lamp-mat 
on  the  table.  When  Cousin  Elmira's  back  was 
turned,  she  gave  the  little  girl  a  surreptitious  pat 
upon  the  shoulder;  and  then  the  two  women  with- 
drew and  passed  down  the  stairs  into  the  front 
entry. 

"You  are  very  good  to  take  all  this  trouble,  I  'm 
sure,"  Miss  Faxon  declared,  with  a  well-bred  cere- 
mony which  was  no  more  than  the  farmer's  wife  was 
entitled  to;  for  they  were  all  strangers  to  her,  the 
children  having  been  taken  out  into  the  country  for 
their  picnic. 

But  Mrs.  Stevens  had  not  lived  for  forty  years 
close  by  a  favorite  picnic  grove  without  learning  to 
take  such  invasions  philosophically.  She  was  an 
elderly  woman  whose  own  sons  and  daughters  were 
already  scattered  on  their  several  paths  in  life,  and 
it  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  she  would  enter- 
tain any  sentimental  ideas  about  children.  She 
flattered  herself,  however,  that  she  could  tellan  old 
maid  from  the  mother  of  a  family  at  sight.  Accord- 
ingly, as  she  preceded  Elmira  down  the  stairs,  she 


8  Katharine  Day 

threw  over  her  shoulder  the  casual  remark :  ' '  That 's 
not  your  child,  I  calc'late." 

"No;  she  's  not,"  Miss  Faxon  returned,  with  em- 
phasis; "but  she  's  my  cousin's  child,  and  I  have  all 
the  care  of  her." 

There  was  in  her  tone  an  implication,  which  could 
hardly  escape  the  most  cursory  observer,  that  the 
tall,  severe  woman  did  not  regard  her  task  as  a  priv- 
ilege; and  Mrs.  Stevens,  much  pleased  with  her  own 
perspicacity,  nodded  her  head  as  her  guest  passed 
out  at  the  front  door,  and  determined,  on  the  spot, 
that  she  would  cut  a  piece  of  mince  pie  for  the  little 
prisoner  upstairs. 

The  object  of  her  kindness,  meanwhile,  all  uncon- 
scious of  the  solace  in  store,  lay  sobbing  upon  the  in- 
grain carpet  in  a  passion  of  grief  and  anger.  She 
had  been  so  happy,  oh,  so  happy,  in  the  big  barn! 
She  had  so  loved  the  smell  of  the  hay,  and  it  had  felt 
so  soft  and  elastic  under  her  feet!  She  could  have 
buried  herself  in  it  and  lain  there  all  the  livelong  day, 
listening  to  the  clucking  hens  as  they  foraged  in  the 
stalls  below,  watching  the  darting  swallows  and  the 
wandering  sunbeams.  She  was  just  going  to  climb 
up  there  and  hide  herself  away  when  Sammie  Lovell 
stumped  them  all,  and  she  was  n't  going  to  pretend 
to  be  stumped  when  she  was  not.  How  the  children 
had  wondered  at  her,  and  how  brave  she  had  been! 
Yes,  she  knew  that  she  had  been  brave  and  had 
risked  her  life,  just  as  much  as  the  soldiers  were 
doing  down  South. 

Now  little  Katherine  had  a  very  clear  head  for  a 
child  of  seven,  and  she  knew  perfectly  well  that  she 
ought  to  have  been  ashamed  of  herself  to  compare 
her  foolhardiness  to  the  courage  of  the  soldiers,  whom 


The  Little  Orator'  9 

in  her  better  moments  she  thought  of  with  adoring 
gratitude.  But,  as  she  lay  there,  palpitating  with 
the  sense  of  disgrace  and  chagrin,  she  did  not  want  to 
be  just,  she  did  not  want  to  be  reasonable;  she  pas- 
sionately revelled  in  her  own  naughtiness. 

"Oh,  I  wish  I  had  fallen  off,  I  wish  I  had  fallen 
off1"  she  sobbed  aloud,  as  she  lay  face  downward  on 
the  hard  floor.  She  had  been  in  danger,  and 
Cousin  Elmira  had  not  cared.  Perhaps  she  would 
have  cared  if  she  had  fallen  at  her  feet,  crushed  and 
dead.  What  would  have  happened?  Would  they 
have  picked  her  up  tenderly,  gently,  more  gently 
and  tenderly  than  any  one  had  ever  touched  her? 
Would  they  have  said  how  plucky  she  had  been? 
Would  Cousin  Elmira  have  cried?  Would  her  father 
have  cried  at  the  funeral,  as  he  had  done  at  her  Un- 
cle George's  funeral?  She  was  quite  sure  she  had 
seen  tears  in  his  eyes  on  that  occasion.  She  had  not 
known  until  that  day  that  people's  fathers  ever 
cried;  she  did  not  believe  that  such  a  thing  happened 
very  often.  But  if  they  cried  when  their  brothers- 
in-law  died,  of  course  they  would  have  to  cry  for 
their  own  children.  It  would  be  only  proper, — and 
propriety  was  the  fetish  to  which  all  grown  people 
appeared  to  defer. 

The  funeral  would  be  in  the  long  parlor,  and 
the  people  would  all  sit  around  with  their  handker- 
chiefs at  their  eyes,  and  it  would  be  so  still  that  you 
could  hear  the  ticking  of  the  clock  on  the  stairs,  and 
the  fragrance  of  the  white  flowers  would  be  so  heavy 
that  you  could  almost  feel  it.  And  all  this  solem- 
nity would  be  on  account  of  a  small  person  who 
had  never  in  her  life  enjoyed  the  importance  that 
she  craved. 


io  Katherine  Day 

So  enamored  was  the  child  of  the  dramatic  situa- 
tion she  had  conjured  up,  that  she  almost  forgot  her 
woes;  and,  as  the  sense  of  them  abated,  she  lifted 
her  head,  and,  sitting  upright  on  the  floor,  began 
looking,  about  her  with  bright,  observant  eyes.  Her 
attention  was  first  attracted  by  a  huge  four-poster 
rejoicing  in  a  portentous  feather  bed  and  a  calico 
flounce.  This  interested  her  particularly  because 
Grandmother  Day  had  very  much  the  same  kind  of 
bedstead  in  the  great  west  chamber,  and  one  which 
had  formerly  boasted  an  even  prettier  flounce  than 
this.  Indeed,  if  grandmother's  flounce  had  not 
been  a  very  remarkable  one,  with  peacocks  and 
summer-houses  on  it,  Katherine  could  hardly  have 
remembered  it;  for  ages  and  ages  ago,  when  she  was 
only  five  years  old,  the  feather  bed  had  given  place 
to  a  hair  mattress,  which  lent  a  sunken,  hollow- 
chested  look  to  the  whole  structure,  and  the  gay 
flounce  had  been  superseded  by  one  of  dotted  muslin. 

Presently  Katherine  jumped  up  and  walked  over 
to  the  mantelpiece.  It  was  a  narrow  shelf  quite  peo- 
pled with  little  china  images,  among  which  was  a 
sheep  covered  with  small  shiny  knobs, — to  repre- 
sent quite  unmistakably  the  wool, — and  a  lion  of 
very  fierce  aspect,  laboring,  however,  under  the  dis- 
advantage of  being  somewhat  smaller  than  his  natu- 
ral prey,  the  sheep.  But  best  of  all,  to  Katherine's 
thinking, — better  even  than  the  cradle  with  the 
baby  in  it,  all  tucked  up  with  china  coverlets, — bet- 
ter than  Red  Riding- Hood  herself,  deep  in  converse 
with  the  wolf, — was  a  little  china  gentleman  in  a 
broad-rimmed  black  hat,  with  a  very  stiff  frock-coat 
and  blue  breeches.  He  looked  exceedingly  dignified 
and  genteel,  and  he  held  in  his  right  hand  the  handle 


The  Little  Orator  11 

of  something  in  the  nature  of  a  cane,  which  had 
broken  short  off.  This  would  seem  to  indicate  that 
he  had  not  altogether  escaped  the  vicissitudes  of 
life,  —  yet  how  smiling  he  was!  Little  Kather- 
ine  longed  to  take  him  in  her  hands;  but  that 
would  have  been  meddling, — one  of  the  worst  sins  in 
her  childish  decalogue, — and  the  thought  of  the  kind 
face  of  her  hostess  stayed  her  hand.  She  felt  upon 
her  honor,  as  the  boys  and  girls  used  to  say. 

To  escape  temptation,  she  repaired  to  one  of  the 
open  windows  and  leaned  out  into  the  warm,  sweet 
air.  The  picnic  grove  was  only  a  few  rods  away, 
and  she  could  hear  the  voices  of  the  children  and  the 
clatter  of  dishes.  It  must  be  luncheon  time.  She 
wondered  whether  they  would  think  to  send  her  any- 
thing to  eat.  She  was  not  conscious  of  being  hun- 
gry; she  was  still  too  excited  for  that.  Underlying 
all  her  idle  thoughts  was  the  sense  of  ignominy  and 
defeat,  of  the  cruel  reaction  from  the  moment's 
exaltation. 

She  knelt  down  on  a  wooden  footstool  and  rested 
her  elbows  on  the  window-sill.  There  was  a  beauti- 
ful elm  tree  in  the  dooryard,  and,  as  the  child  gazed 
into  its  glinting  green  depths,  a  sense  of  peace  and 
well-being  came  over  her.  A  bird  hopped  in  and 
out  among  the  gently  rustling  branches,  eying  her 
with  friendly  inquisitiveness ;  a  light  breeze  swayed 
the  tassel  of  the  window-shade,  so  that  it  touched 
her  cheek.  It  felt  like  a  caress.  She  was  glad  she 
had  not  fallen  from  the  beam;  she  would  rather  be 
alive.  What  had  Mrs.  Stevens  said  ?  "  To  some  good 
end."  Had  she  been  preserved  to  some  good  end? 
She  dreamily  wondered  what  good  end  could  be 
wrought  by  a  naughty  little  girl  whom  nobody  seemed 


12  Katherine  Day 

to  think  very  much  of.  Perhaps  when  the  good 
end  was  accomplished  people  would  be  kind  and 
sweet  to  her.  Winny  Gerald,  her  best  friend,  was 
always  petted  and  made  much  of;  but  then  Winny 
had  curly  hair.  Katherine  felt  very  sure  that  it 
would  be  easier  to  be  good  if  you  had  curly  hair. 

The  air  was  very  warm,  and  the  buzz  of  insects 
had  a  drowsy  sound;  and  presently  Katherine 
slipped  down  from  the  footstool  and  curled  herself 
up  on  the  floor  as  naturally  as  a  kitten  might  have 
done.  Lying  there,  with  her  head  on  her  arm,  she 
still  thought  of  Winny.  Yes,  everybody  loved  Winny, 
and  Winny  had  curly  hair.  She  wished  she  had  curly 
hair, — to  some  good  end,  to  some  good  end.  If  only 
she  had  curly  hair, — to  some  good  end.  The  words 
repeated  and  confused  themselves  in  her  mind  until 
she  was  fast  asleep. 

And  Mrs.  Stevens  found  her  still  asleep  when  she 
came  up,  an  hour  later.  The  breeze  that  had  stirred 
the  tassel  found  little  to  play  with  in  the  small 
mousseline-de-laine  figure  under  the  west  window,  for 
the  dress  clung  fast  to  the  carpet  and  the  hair  was 
pulled  straight  back  from  the  forehead  in  Cousin  El- 
mira's  severest  manner.  And  even  the  sun,  that 
came  stealing  across  the  little  brown  face,  found 
nothing  to  reveal  but  round,  indefinite  childish  fea- 
tures and  a  line  of  long,  dark  lashes  where  the  eyes 
had  been  angry,  pathetic,  inquiring,  by  turns.  There 
was  really  very  little  to  see  or  to  surmise  in  that 
childish  face;  yet,  as  Mrs.  Stevens  stood  looking 
down  upon  it,  her  motherly  eyes  discovered  some- 
thing which  caused  her  to  say  to  herself  with  deep 
inward  satisfaction:  "I'm  glad  I  thought  of  that 
mince  pie,  anyhow.  I  guess  she  '11  relish  a  piece!" 


CHAPTER  II 

A    THANKLESS    TASK 
"  Truth  is  the  strong  thing.     Let  man's  life  be  true." 

COUSIN  ELMIRA,  meanwhile,  having  thus  satis- 
factorily disposed  of  the  culprit,  was  turning 
her  admirable  energies  to  good  account  in  the  picnic 
grove.  The  shower,  though  sharp,  had  been  of 
short  duration,  and  the  big  pine  trees  had  appro- 
priated most  of  the  rainfall  to  their  own  use.  The 
carpet  of  needles  was  dry  and  elastic  underfoot, 
while  the  sun,  shining  upon  the  moist  branches 
overhead,  drew  forth  odors  fit  for  Araby  the  Blest. 
Truly  the  New  England  pine  grove  in  its  more  genial 
moods  may  hint  of  an  ecstasy  no  tropical  forest  ever 
dreamed. 

We  may  be  sure,  however,  that  no  such  far- 
fetched comparison  was  suggesting  itself  to  the 
minds  of  the  three  women  engaged  in  spreading 
goodly  viands,  amid  much  clatter  of  tongues  and 
crockery,  upon  the  long  deal  table.  There  was  Miss 
Susan  Littlefield,  the  buxom,  good-natured  captain 
of  the  infant  class,  with  cheeks  as  sound  as  a  Baldwin 
apple,  and  sharp  little  black  eyes  that  twinkled 
pleasantly.  She  had  charge  of  the  cake  department, 
and  was  inclined  to  cut  the  slices  rather  large ;  talking 


14  Katherine  Day 

volubly  the  while,  and  with  much  good  sense  and 
good  cheer. 

Miss  Susan,  in  fact,  was  sometimes  criticised  for 
her  unfailing  spirits,  certain  cavillers  holding  that,  in 
view  of  her  betrothal  to  William  Henderson, — then 
risking  his  life  in  the  war, — a  paler  cheek  and  quieter 
manner  would  have  been  more  becoming.  Among 
her  critics  none  was  more  severe  than  her  coadjutor 
at  the  deal  table,  Miss  Georgiana  Tufts.  She  was 
the  youngest  of  the  trio,  fair  and  flaxen- curled,  with 
a  slight  stoop  in  the  shoulders,  a  very  prim  mouth, 
and  sentimental  blue  eyes.  She  was  dressed  with  ex- 
quisite neatness  and  explicitness,  a  moment's  glance 
sufficing  to  convince  the  observer  that  everything 
had  been  selected  to  match.  The  prevailing  color 
of  the  toilet  was  blue,  while  the  wide,  flowing 
sleeves  and  the  drapery  of  the  skirt  over  the 
spreading  crinoline  partook  of  the  drooping  char- 
acter of  the  pale  ringlets.  Upon  these  last  rested 
one  of  the  flappy,  broad-rimmed  leghorn  hats  then 
in  vogue  among  the  well-to-do,  and  which  were 
provided  with  a  long,  narrow  ribbon  depending 
from  the  crown,  by  means  of  which  the  wearer  could 
regulate  the  flap  according  to  the  direction  of  wind 
or  sun;  the  ribbon,  in  Miss  Tufts'  case,  was  of  pre- 
cisely the  same  blue  as  her  eyes.  As  she  stood  by 
the  table,  laying  the  well-filled  sandwiches  in  neat 
piles  upon  squares  of  white  paper,  there  was  that  in 
her  manner  which  would  lead  one  to  infer  that  if  she 
had  had  a  lover  in  the  war  her  general  aspect  would 
have  done  justice  to  the  situation. 

Cousin  Elmira,  on  the  other  hand,  valued  Miss 
Littlefield's  strength  of  character  at  its  true  worth. 
Indeed,  it  was  only  since  the  stress  and  strain  of  life 


A  Thankless  Task  15 

— like  the  sun  and  rain  on  the  pine  trees — had 
brought  out  Miss  Susan's  qualities  that  Elmira  had 
begun  to  take  an  interest  in  her.  The  two  women 
were  neighbors  in  Camwood,  a  pleasant  suburb  of 
Boston,  and  Susan  had  always  cherished  an  admira- 
tion for  Charles  Day's  cousin  and  housekeeper.  The 
latter  was  several  years  her  senior,  and  still  further 
removed  from  her  by  virtue  of  a  certain  impression 
of  superiority  to  which  the  modest  Susan  was  keenly 
susceptible. 

Elmira  was  tall  and  particularly  graceful,  but 
without  other  beauty.  Her  complexion  was  pale 
almost  to  sallowness,  and  there  were  severe  lines  in 
her  countenance, — lines  with  which  Life  had  sup- 
plemented Nature's  intention.  No  one  ever  thought 
of  noticing  the  color  of  Elmira 's  eyes,  which  was  neg- 
ative, like  that  of  her  hair.  It  was  the  mouth  that 
made  its  impression;  a  thin  mouth  that  could  smile, 
at  need,  but  rarely  laughed.  The  smile  being  per- 
formed, the  lips  closed  in  a  thin,  straight  line  that 
seemed  to  deprecate  the  indiscretion. 

There  had  been  a  good  deal  of  speculation,  first 
and  last,  as  to  what  the  capabilities  of  Elmira  Fax- 
on's nature  were, — for  your  genuine  New  Englander 
loves  to  speculate.  But  there  was  one  point  upon 
which  the  inquiring  mind  was  speedily  set  at  rest; 
she  did  not  possess  a  grain  of  humor.  This  was  a 
pity,  for  not  only  might  a  sense  of  humor  have  im- 
proved her  general  appearance,  substituting  other 
and  more  genial  lines  for  those  of  which  mention  has 
been  made,  but  it  might  also  have  done  her  the 
practical  service  of  modifying  the  state  of  chronic 
displeasure  in  which  she  lived  toward  her  trouble- 
some charge,  little  Katherine.  That  very  morning, 


1 6  Katherine  Day 

for  instance,  if  she  could  but  have  appreciated  what 
a  comical  figure  the  child  had  cut,  her  eyes  would 
not  have  been  holden  from  the  pathetic  side  of  the 
picture,  and  she  would  perhaps  have  dealt  more 
gently  with  the  ambitious  little  speechifier.  That, 
however,  was  not  to  be.  It  had  been  written  in  the 
Book  of  Fate  that  little  Katherine  Day  was  not  to 
be  spoiled  by  indulgence. 

"There!"  Susan  Littlefield  exclaimed,  as  she 
placed  her  last  thick  slice  of  cake  on  top  of  the  pile, — 
"that  's  done!  We  are  ahead  of  time,  as  usual  when 
you  're  manager,  Elmira!  What  a  good  time  those 
children  are  having!" 

Susan  threw  her  plump  shoulders  back  and  con- 
templated affectionately  a  swarm  of  bovs  and  girls 
whirling  in  a  mad  circle  about  the  weeping  Sallie 
Water,  the  morality  of  whose  conduct  in  affliction 
had  not,  at  that  stage  of  the  world's  history,  been 
called  in  question. 

As  the  Sallie  of  the  moment  proceeded  to  act  upon 
the  injunction: 

"  Turn  to  the  East, 
Turn  to  the  West, 
Turn  to  the  one  that  you  love  best," 

and  discreetly  selected  her  own  small  brother  for 
matrimonial  preferment,  Miss  Susan's  benignant 
smile  deepened.  Then,  while  the  children  danced 
wildly  about  the  united  couple,  shrieking,  in  high 
childish  treble: 

"  Now  you  are  married 
We  wish  you  great  joy; 
Your  father  and  mother 
You  must  obey, 
And  now  kneel  down  and  kiss  each  other!  " 


A  Thankless  Task  17 

the  indulgent  friend  of  the  noisiest  and  most  obstrep- 
erous child  turned  her  kindly,  humorous  face  upon 
Miss  Faxon  with  persuasive  intent,  saying:  "And 
now  don't  you  think  we  might  go  and  call  Kather- 
ine?" 

Now  since  Miss  Faxon  had  not  for  a  moment 
dismissed  from  her  mind  little  Katherine  and  her  mis- 
doings, the  suggestion  induced  no  change  of  coun- 
tenance whatever.  But  then,  her  countenance  was 
never  a  mobile  one,  and  therefore  Miss  Susan  had  not 
foreseen  the  severity  of  the  reply. 

"There  is  no  occasion  for  calling  her  at  present," 
Miss  Faxon  declared.  "When  the  children  have 
eaten  their  dinner  I  may  let  her  have  some  bread 
and  butter, — though  it  's  more  than  she  deserves!" — 
and  the  thin  lips  closed  in  a  manner  which  forbade 
remonstrance. 

"I  think  it  's  a  very  strange  thing,"  Miss  Georgi- 
ana  Tufts  remarked,  adjusting  the  rim  of  her  hat  in 
the  interest  of  her  complexion1, — "that  Mr.  Charles 
Day's  child  should  be  so  unladylike." 

"It  would  be  if  a  child  had  but  one  parent!"  was 
Miss  Faxon's  dry  rejoinder. 

"But  surely,  Elmira,  there  was  nothing  unlady- 
like about  Katherine's  mother!" 

It  was  Miss  Susan  who  thus  valiantly  took  up  the 
cudgels  for  the  defenceless.  She  had  never  had  any 
intimate  acquaintance  with  Mrs.  Charles  Day,  whose 
sojourn  among  them  had  indeed  been  pitifully 
short,  but  she  had  stood  with  those  who  looked 
upon  the  face  of  the  young  mother  when  the  seal  of 
eternal  silence  rested  upon  it,  and  she  could  not 
allow  the  dead  woman  to  suffer  detraction. 

If  Miss  Faxon  had  seemed  inclined  to  enter  into 


1 8  Katharine  Day 

a  discussion,  her  good-humored  adversary  might  per- 
haps have  considered  that  she  had  fulfilled  her  obliga- 
tion. But  there  was  something  far  more  disparaging 
in  the  cold  silence  with  which  Susan's  protest  was  met 
than  any  spoken  stricture  could  have  expressed,  and, 
when  the  immediate  cravings  of  the  horde  of  children 
were  satisfied,  the  generous  dispenser  of  spongecake 
remarked  cheerfully:  "I  always  thought,  myself, 
that  Mrs.  Day  was  more  than  ladylike." 

"I  don't  know  what  could  be  more  than  lady- 
like," Georgiana  exclaimed,  with  a  curious  explo- 
siveness  of  accent  that  sometimes  led  one  to  question 
whether  her  excessive  gentility  were  after  all  more 
than  skin-deep. 

"Nothing,"  was  Miss  Susan's  tranquil  rejoinder, 
as  she  stooped  to  tie  the  errant  red  braids  of  the 
quondam  Sallie  Waters.  "Nothing, — unless  be- 
ing a  lady  is  better  than  being  like  one." 

"Of  course!"  Elmira  agreed,  with  frigid  impartial- 
ity; "the  expression  fadylike  as  we  use  it  is  always 
a  misnomer." 

It  was  difficult  for  Elmira  not  to  take  sides  against 
Georgiana  Tufts  even  when,  as  in  this  case,  that 
most  "ladylike"  of  all  their  circle  had  openly  es- 
poused her  cause.  In  fact,  if  the  truth  were  but 
known,  there  was  something  about  Miss  Tufts  and 
her  peculiar  graces  which  was  apt  to  get  on  Elmira 's 
nerves.  The  former,  however,  was  quite  uncon- 
scious of  the  antagonism  she  excited  ;  for,  quick 
though  she  would  have  been  to  resent  any  deprecia- 
tion of  her  own  qualities,  she  was  not  equally  quick 
to  perceive  it.  One  must  have  some  delicacy  of  per- 
ception to  recognize  the  attitude  of  another's  mind 
even  toward  one's  self, 


A  Thankless  Task  19 

Without  wasting  further  words  on  the  niceties  of 
the  English  tongue,  therefore,  she  remarked,  with  a 
gratifying  consciousness  of  contributing  something 
of  importance  to  the  conversation:  "Mrs.  Day's 
manners  were  certainly  not  what  we  were  brought 
up  to  in  Camwood." 

"I  should  like  to  know  how  they  fell  short," 
Susan  inquired  rather  sharply. 

"Well,  for  one  thing,  she  was  always  speaking  to 
people  she  had  n't  been  introduced  to." 

"And  what  of  that?"  Susan  retorted.  "It  only 
showed  that  she  was  too  sure  of  her  position  to  be 
afraid  of  risking  it." 

Miss  Tufts  bridled  at  this. 

"Perhaps  you  think  it  was  ladylike  of  her  to 
strike  a  drunken  teamster  with  her  riding-whip  the 
week  after  she  came  home  a  bride." 

"That  was  because  the  man  was  cruel  to  his 
horses.  At  the  same  time,"  Susan  admitted,  "it 
might  have  been  better  if  she  had  entered  a  com- 
plaint against  him.  And  yet, — I  'm  not  so  sure! 
They  do  say  that  the  first  stroke  sobered  him." 

"It  makes  me  think  of  Katherine's  last  perform- 
ance," Miss  Faxon  remarked,  diligently  wielding 
a  checked  dish-towel.  "She  stayed  out  until  long 
after  sundown  Tuesday  evening,  as  she  is  strictly 
forbidden  to  do,  and  we  found  she  had  been  stand- 
ing guard  over  a  miserable  cur  that  had  been  run 
over,  because  she  was  afraid  he  would  get  hurt.  It 
was  on  Elm  Street,  where  there  is  very  little  passing, 
and  nobody  had  come  along." 

"And  what  happened?"  asked  Georgiana. 

"Oh,  I  found  her  there  after  eight  o'clock,  and 
brought  her  home." 


2O  Katherine  Day 

"And  the  dog?"  Miss  Susan  inquired.  "Did  they 
carry  him  off  to  a  safe  place?" 

"I  'm  sure  I  don't  know,"  was  the  indifferent 
reply,  "but  I  had  almost  to  drag  Katherine  away 
from  him.  I  think  I  have  never  seen  her  in  such  a 
passion  as  she  was!" 

"She  seems  to  have  an  ugly  temper,"  Miss  Tufts 
remarked,  carefully  dislodging  an  adherent  crumb 
from  her  flowing  sleeve. 

"If  she  has,"  Miss  Susan  interposed,  "she  cer- 
tainly did  n't  get  that  from  her  mother.  Every- 
body says  that  Mrs.  Charles  Day  had  the  sweetest 
disposition.  I  suppose  Archie  takes  more  after 
his  mother  in  that  respect,"  she  added  tentatively. 

"Archie  is  certainly  not  a  difficult  child  to  man- 
age," Miss  Faxon  admitted.  "But  bringing  up  other 
people's  children  is  a  thankless  task  at  the  best." 

"Miss  Littlefield,  may  I  have  another  piece  of 
cake?" 

The  speaker  was  a  boy  of  nine,  clad  in  the  old- 
mannish  costume  that  little  boys  of  his  day  were 
liable  to.  A  pretty  boy,  as  any  one  must  admit, 
with  fair  hair  and  wheedling  brown  eyes  which 
were  likely  to  win  his  battles  without  a  fight, — thus 
furnishing  a  pleasing  instance  of  the  economy  of 
nature.  For  the  lower  part  of  the  still  somewhat 
rudimentary  face  did  not  promise  well  for  a  fight. 

"How  many  pieces  have  you  had,  Archie?"  Miss 
Susan  asked. 

The  other  children  were  playing  at  a  distance,  so 
that  Archie  was  safe  from  competition  in  his  designs 
upon  the  small  remainder  of  the  cake.  He  dug  one 
toe  into  the  pine  needles,  after  the  immemorial  boy- 
ish habit,  and  answered,  "I  don't  remember." 


A  Thankless  Task  21 

"Don't  remember!"  Cousin  Elmira  exclaimed. 
"What  nonsense,  Archie!" 

"Well!"  Archie  declared,  addressing  himself  once 
more  to  Miss  Susan,  as  the  auditor  most  likely  to  see 
his  point:  "I  don't  feel  as  if  I  had  had  more  than 
one!" 

Then  the  three  women  laughed,  frowned,  and  sim- 
pered, each  after  her  kind,  and  a  generous  piece  of 
cake  was  administered  to  the  little  beggar,  who 
promptly  departed  with  it,  lest  a  belated  calculation 
should  betray  the  fact  that  this  was  his  fourth  piece. 

An  impartial  observer,  acquainted  with  Miss 
Faxon's  methods  where  the  discipline  of  little  Kath- 
erine  was  concerned,  might  have  discovered  in  the 
indulgence  with  which  the  small  affair  of  the  cake 
had  been  suffered  to  come  to  a  successful  issue,  a 
clue  to  Archie's  greater  manageableness.  Perhaps 
some  such  impression,  hovering  in  Miss  Susan's 
mind,  may  have  induced  the  stroke  of  diplomacy 
which  she  now  proceeded  to  execute. 

' '  I  am  going  to  carry  the  rest  of  the  cake  in  to 
Mrs.  Stevens,"  she  remarked  casually.  "She  might 
relish  it  with  her  supper.  And — might  n't  I  just  as 
well  take  Katherine's  dinner  along  at  the  same 
time?" 

"As  you  please,"  Miss  Faxon  assented,  glad  to  be 
spared  the  little  walk  in  the  sun  that  brooded  hot 
outside  the  picnic  grove. 

And  so  it  happened  that  it  was  Miss  Susan  who 
came  in  upon  little  Katherine,  sitting  in  the  big 
farm  kitchen,  tightly  clasping  a  large  triangle  of 
mince  pie  in  a  warm  little  hand,  and  talking  very 
fast  the  while  to  her  hostess,  whose  rocker  had  fairly 
creaked  with  sympathetic  interest  as  the  child 


22  Katherine  Day 

described  her  sensations  when  first  she  ventured  upon 
the  big  beam.  Katherine  was  a  born  conversation- 
alist, and  she  held  her  listener  enthralled. 

"You  see,"  she  explained,  gesticulating  vigor- 
ously, pie  in  hand;  "it  was  n't  dangerous,  really,  un- 
less you  got  scared.  It  was  as  wide  as  that," — and 
the  pie-laden  hand  marked  off  a  foot  measure  from 
the  empty  one, — "and  any  one  could  walk  on  a  place 
as  wide  as  that.  Why,  I  can  walk  on  a  rail  fence 
just  as  easy, — only  Cousin  Elmira  does  n't  allow  it. 
I  never  fell  off  but  once,  and  then  it  was  because  the 
rail  was  loose;  and  it  would  n't  have  done  any  harm 
if  my  hoopskirt  cover  had  n't  caught  on  a  nail 
and  torn  itself.  So  I  had  to  own  up  where  I  had 
been." 

"And  what  did  your  cousin  do  about  it?" 

"She  sent  me  right  to  bed.  She  always  does, — 
and  it  was  quite  early  in  the  afternoon  too." 

"And  is  that  a  very  bad  punishment?" 

"It  's  the  worst  there  is,"  Katherine  replied  with 
conviction. 

"What  made  you  tell  her  what  you  had  been  do- 
ing? She  might  have  thought  you  had  caught  your 
skirt  on  a  bramble." 

"Why,  she  asked  me;    so  I  had  to  tell  her." 

"Then  you  are  a  truthful  little  girl,"  and  Mrs. 
Stevens'  twinkling  knitting-needles  paused  for  the 
reply. 

"Oh,  yes!  I  s'pose  I  am  truthful,"  Katherine  re- 
turned in  rather  an  indifferent,  depreciatory  tone. 
"I  don't  like  to  tell  lies." 

"You  mean  you  know  it  's  wicked." 

"I  don't  know.  Some  children  that  are  n't  at  all 
naughty  tell  lies." 


A  Thankless  Task  23 

"But  you  know  it  's  a  wicked  thing  to  do,"  Mrs. 
Stevens  insisted. 

"Yes,  but — I  do  a  great  many  wicked  things." 

"Then  what  's  the  reason  you  don't  tell  lies?" 

"Well,  I  guess  it  's  'cause  it  makes  you  feel  so 
funny  inside.  I  tried  the  other  day  to  tell  one  for 
Archie,  but  I  did  n't  stick  it  out,  and  he  was  very  mad 
with  me." 

"And  who  is  Archie?" 

"He  's  my  big  brother.  He's  the  tallest  boy  in 
his  class,  and — "  the  child  was  eagerly  ready  to 
launch  upon  a  new  subject. 

"And  he  tells  lies?"  Mrs.  Stevens  persisted. 

"I  did  n't  say  any  such  thing!"  Katherine  de- 
clared. 

"But  he  wanted  you  to  tell  one." 

This  was  a  poser,  and  the  little  sister  cast  hastily 
about  for  some  mode  of  evasion,  —  an  art  in 
which  she  was  not  skilled.  For  once,  however,  she 
was  in  luck,  for,  looking  out  of  the  window,  she  dis- 
covered a  diversion  in  the  shape  of  Miss  Susan 
Littlefield  trudging  cheerfully  across  from  the 
picnic  grove.  She  had  left  her  sunbonnet  behind 
her,  and  her  face  was  flushed  from  the  heat  and  the 
exercise. 

"There  comes  Miss  Susan,"  Katherine  hastened 
to  remark.  "Perhaps  she  's  got  my  dinner  in  that 
basket.  She  '11  be  surprised  when  she  finds  I  've 
had  some!" 

"Well,  Katherine!"  Miss  Susan  exclaimed  as  she 
paused  in  the  doorway.  "You  seem  to  be  doing 
pretty  well!" 

"Yes,"  Katherine  cried  eagerly.  "This  is  my 
second  piece,  and  the  lady  cut  the  pie  on  purpose!" 


24  Katherine  Day 

"Well,  you  had  better  eat  it  up  quick  before  Cous- 
in Elmira  conies  in.  She  might  not  think  it  was 
much  punishment  if  she  found  you  feasting  on 
goodies." 

"  I  'm  not  going  to  eat  this  piece,"  Katherine  de- 
clared. 

"  Not  going  to  eat  it?  Why,  what  be  you  going  to 
do  with  it?"  inquired  her  hostess. 

"I  was  saving  it  for  Archie.  I  thought  perhaps 
he  would  come  over  when  he  had  finished  his  din- 
ner," -  and  she  glanced  again  rather  wistfully 
toward  the  picnic  grove. 

Miss  Susan,  recalling  the  sight  of  the  little  gour- 
mand devouring  his  fourth  piece  of  cake, — as  she 
was  very  well  aware. — quite  untroubled  by  the 
thought  of  the  little  prisoner  within,  felt  her  heart 
harden  against  him. 

"I  would  n't  trouble  my  head  about  Archie,"  she 
exclaimed,  with  a  brusqueness  that  could  hurt  only 
the  innocent.  "  He  's  had  more  sweets  already  than 
are  good  for  him,  and  he  does  n't  seem  to  have  any 
idea  of  coming  over." 

Katherine's  face  fell. 

"I  s'pose  he  forgot,"  she  said  slowly;  and  then, 
rising,  and  walking  over  to  the  table,  she  laid  the 
piece  of  pie  back  on  the  plate. 

"Ain't  you  going  to  eat  it?"  Mrs.  Stevens  asked,  in 
kind  concern. 

"No,  thank  you,"  Katherine  returned,  with  a 
curious  small  womanly  dignity;  "  it  was  very  good, 
but  I  've  eaten  enough.  And  now,  may  I  go  up-stairs 
again  ? ' ' 

"Why,  yes,  child!  Of  course.  Your  cousin  might 
be  better  pleased  to  find  you  there," 


A  Thankless  Task  25 


"I  was  n't  thinking  of  that,"  said  Katherine, 
ing  on  the  threshold  and  looking  back.     "  I  wanted  to. 
see  the  little  images  again  !  '  ' 

"All  right,  little  girl,"  the  kind  hostess  agreed. 
"  Run  along,  and  —  you  may  take  them  down  and  look 
at  them  one  at  a  time  if  you  '11  be  very  careful." 

"Oh!  may  I?"  and  the  swiftness  with  which  the 
small  feet  scampered  up  the  stairs  would  have  seemed 
to  indicate  that  even  wounded  affections  are  suscep- 
tible of  healing.  Katherine  might  not  bring  herself 
to  eat  the  pie  she  had  saved  for  an  ungrateful  Archie, 
but  she  could  still  find  solace  in  a  more  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  the  little  china  gentleman  she  had  so 
longed  to  know  better. 

"  Bless  your  soul!"  Mrs.  Stevens  exclaimed,  as  Miss 
Susan  displayed  the  generous  half-loaf  of  sponge-cake 
which  she  had  brought  her.  "  You  need  n't  put  your- 
self out  about  me  !  But  I  will  say  that  I  relish  a  piece 
of  sponge-cake  with  my  supper  more  'n  most  anything 
else,  —  and  so  does  Mr.  Stevens,  too!" 

"That  's  good,"  Miss  Susan  replied,  vigorously  fan- 
ning herself  with  her  black  silk  apron.  "And  —  I  don't 
know  how  Miss  Faxon  might  feel  about  it,  —  but 
I  am  really  obliged  to  you  for  being  so  kind  to  little 
Katherine." 

"I  like  her!"  said  Mrs.  Stevens  with  decision. 
"  She  's  smart  and  she  's  truthful  and  she  's  generous. 
I  don't  see  what  more  you  want." 

"Yes,"  Miss  Susan  admitted  doubtfully;  "but  her 
cousin  says  she  's  a  very  difficult  child  to  manage." 

"  That  's  because  she  don't  know  how!  And  I  guess 
she  exaggerates  things.  There  are  worse  crimes  than 
climbing  'round  a  clean  barn,  —  now  I  tell  you!" 

"But  the  child  risked  her  life!" 


26  Katherine  Day 

The  farmer's  wife  gave  her  companion  a  shrewd 
Jook. 

"Do  you  suppose  that 's  why  she  was  punished?" 
she  inquired. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know;  but  it  was  reason  enough! " 

"Yes!  I  guess  that  's  so.  But,  Lord!  she  ain't  one 
to  tumble  off  a  high  place.  She  'd  be  a  sight  more 
likely  to  stub  her  toe  running  right  along  the  road ! ' ' 
In  which  casual  observation  Mrs.  Stevens  had  said  a 
more  significant  thing  than  she  was  aware  of. 

"  Well,"  Miss  Susan  admitted,  making  as  if  to  return 
to  her  duties,  "there  does  seem  to  be  a  special  Provi- 
dence watching  over  that  child.  There  is  n't  a  boy  in 
Camwood  that  does  such  things.  Why,  Mrs.  Stevens," 
and  she  paused,  door-handle  in  hand,  "  we  had  the 
Sunday-school  picnic  out  at  the  old  fort  a  year  ago, 
when  Katherine  was  only  six  years  old.  You  know 
there  's  a  switch  rail  of  the  Albany  Railroad  runs  close 
by  there  on  the  other  side  of  the  fence.  Well,  if  you  '11 
believe  it,  Katherine  Day  crawled  through  under  a 
moving  freight  car!" 

"Goodness  sakes!  What  put  such  a  thing  into  her 
head?" 

"One  of  the  big  boys  dared  her  to  do  it!" 

"Well,  well!"  Mrs.  Stevens  cried.  "That  Miss 
Faxon  has  got  her  hands  full,  I  declare.  And  she 
ain't  fit  for  it,  now  I  tell  you, — she  ain't  fit  for  it!" 
and  Miss  Susan,  with  all  her  loyalty  to  Elmira  Faxon, 
could  but  silently  acquiesce  in  the  good  woman's 
verdict. 


CHAPTER  III 

TO    SOME    GOOD    END 
"  Respect  all  such  as  sing  when  all  alone." 

ALTHOUGH  little  Katherine  did  not  again  visit 
that  particular  picnic  grove,  nor  behold  the 
kind  woman  who  had  so  generously  befriended  her  in 
adversity,  she  never  forgot  her  nor  the  incidents  of 
,hat  checkered  day. 

It  was  not  that  her  own  misdemeanor  was  of  an  un- 
precedented character,  nor  that  its  consequences  were 
unusually  severe.  The  little  girl's  ambition  to  scale 
heights,  her  love  of  peril,  or  rather  her  passion  for  the 
exercise  of  courage,  was  inbred  in  her;  and,  since 
Cousin  Elmira's  idea  of  management  involved  a  sum- 
mary remodelling  of  character,  it  is  perhaps  no  wonder 
that  that  strict  disciplinarian  found  her  task  beset 
with  difficulties. 

No,  it  was  not  the  first  time,  nor  yet  the  last,  that 
the  child's  spirit  had  soared  indecorously  high;  nor 
was  it  the  first  or  last  time  that  it  had  been  ignomin- 
iously  brought  low.  The  unique  feature  of  this  other- 
wise every-day  experience  consisted  in  the  atmosphere 
of  sympathetic  indulgence  and  understanding  in  which 
she  had  found  herself, — a  very  unusual  thing  in  the 
child's  short  and  troublous  career.  Thanks  to  this 
novel  state  of  affairs  that  piece  of  mince  pie  had  had 


28  Katherine  Day 

a  flavor  all  its  own;  the  little  china  gentleman,  when 
she  took  him  with  fearsome  joy  into  her  hands,  seemed 
to  meet  her  advances  with  a  peculiar  courtesy  and 
consideration;  the  birds,  chirping  and  hopping  about 
among  the  elm  branches,  were  her  good  friends ;  the 
very  tassel  in  the  window  had  caressed  her  cheek. 
And  through  all  these  varied  sensations  and  expe- 
riences had  sounded  like  a  refrain  the  echo  of  those 
hopeful  words,  ' '  to  some  good  end ;  to  some  good  end ! ' ' 
Cousin  Elmira  had  punished  her ;  Archie  had  forgotten 
her,  but  the  Lord  Himself  had  preserved  her,  "  to  some 
good  end." 

She  wondered  very  much  what  that  good  end  might 
be,  and  since  she  was  a  child  of  active  mind,  her  specu- 
lations on  that  head  took  many  interesting  forms. 
She  would  sometimes  lie  awake  for  as  much  as  five  or 
ten  minutes  enacting  an  inward  drama  in  which  it 
was  permitted  her  to  save  Archie's  life  and  earn  his 
respectful  gratitude!  Or  again,  as  she  stood  at  the 
garden  gate  watching  the  passing  of  a  little  company 
of  dusty  and  ragged  soldiers  returned  from  the  South, 
she  would  be  filled  with  an  ardent  desire  to  grow  up 
and  become  an  army  nurse  and  die  of  a  fever, — her 
death-bed  rendered  interesting  and  agreeable  by  fer- 
vent blessings.  To  the  child  of  the  middle  sixties, 
who  could  not  remember  a  time  when  the  soldiers  had 
not  been  marching  to  and  fro,  when  women  had  not 
been  making  little  comfort-bags  for  them,  when  the 
news  of  great  battles  had  not  stirred  the  grown  people 
with  an  emotion  unexplained  to  the  childish  mind, 
the  war  and  its  varying  phases  presented  itself  as  a 
permanent  dispensation,  like  the  rotation  of  the  sea- 
sons or  the  prevalence  of  influenza. 

But  perhaps  the  best  vantage-ground   of  all   for 


To  Some  Good  End  29 

dreams  and  fancies  was  the  narrow,  red-cushioned 
pew  with  its  high  walls  over  which  Katherine  could 
just  see  the  bald  head  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Wilder.     She 
would  have  been  an  attentive  listener  of  this  talented 
divine  if  she  had  but  had  the  advantage  of  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  words  and  phrases  which  he  made 
use  of.     But  to  her  the  greater  part  of  his  discourse 
was  as  unintelligible  as  much  of  the  conversation  of 
her  elders  when  not  addressed  to  herself.     Could  the 
good  man  have  guessed  the  satisfaction  with  which 
she  recognized  certain  familiar  words,  such  as  moon, 
star,  summer,  happiness, — above  all,  the  prompt  ar- 
resting of  her  hopeful  attention  when  the  term  "chil- 
dren" fell  from  his  lips,  he  would  certainly  have  been 
touched.     Her  favorite  among  his  dramatis  persona, 
so  to  speak,  was  Peter.     Not  because  she  possessed 
a  very  clear  or  engaging  impression  of  that  fine  old 
saint,  but  because  Peter  was  the  name  of  Grandmother 
Day's  coachman  and  gardener,  her  own  very  good  if 
rather    patronizing    friend,    who    sometimes    conde- 
scended to  dance  a  jig  in  the  stable  to  the  tune  of  an 
errant  hand-organ.     It  was  in  church  that  the  little 
girl,  pondering  upon  Mrs.  Stevens'  cheerful  prophecy, 
— her  ear  caught  at  the  same  time  by  an  allusion  from 
the  pulpit  to  the  Children  of  Israel, — conceived  the 
inspiring  if  not  strictly  original  plan  of  founding  an 
orphan  asylum  "to  some  good  end."     This  proved  a 
most  fruitful  subject  of  thought,  for  the  orphan  asylum 
was  to  be  of  a  very  superior  character.     It  was  to  be 
in  the  country,  a  kind  of  big  farmhouse  provided  with 
a  barn  full  of  sweet  hay, and  offering  beams  and  hay- 
carts  and  ladders  and  live  stock  without  limit.    There 
was  to  be  a  fragrant  wood  near  by,  with  lots  of  violets 
and  anemones,  and,  if  possible,  a  rockery  grown  with 


30  Katharine  Day 

columbines.  Every  child  was  to  have  a  private  and 
particular  dog,  and  some  money  to  give  away,  and 
the  little  girls  should  walk  on  fences  and  even  beams 
to  their  hearts'  content.  And  they  should  climb  trees 
and  play  hop-scotch  and  go  in  swimming — at  which 
point  a  river  had  to  be  improvised  in  the  immediate 
vicinity  of  the  asylum — and  do  every  single  thing  the 
boys  did  without  ever  being  reprimanded  or  dubbed 
tomboys.  Katherine  wondered,  in  passing,  why  it 
was  naughty  for  children  to  call  names,  when  grown 
people  never  thought  anything  of  applying  to  her 
that  of  tomboy  or  kindred  terms  of  opprobrium. 
Indeed,  if  Katherine  had  had  the  power  and  liberty  of 
expression,  it  might  have  transpired  that  she  too  had 
her  abstruse  moral  problems. 

But  there  were  moments  when  Katherine  knelt 
down  to  say  her  prayers,  or  when  she  stood  at  her 
window  of  a  starlit  evening,  that  she  conceived  that 
"good  end"  as  something  beyond  her  present  powers 
of  imagination.  That  she  was  a  truly  imaginative 
child  was  in  nothing  more  clearly  demonstrated  than 
in  the  fact  that  even  at  this  early  age  she  was  able  to 
conceive  the  possibility  of  conditions  vastly  transcend- 
ing anything  she  could  herself  "think  out."  Espe- 
cially was  she  moved  to  such  vague  but  alluring 
speculations  when  looking  at  the  stars.  There  had 
never  been  a  time  when  they  had  not  played  a  part 
in  her  consciousness.  There  were  certain  episodes 
connected  with  them  which  she  never  forgot. 

One  evening  in  particular  she  was  to  remember  as 
long  as  she  lived.  It  was  when  she  had  stood,  a  very 
small  child,  beside  her  big  brother — then  aged  six — 
on  the  back  veranda  of  her  grandmother's  house, 
looking  across  the  lawn  and  garden  toward  the  eastern 


To  Some  Good  End  31 

sky  to  see  the  stars  come  out.  It  was  early  May  and 
the  woodbine  that  festooned  the  white  pillars  of  the 
veranda  was  just  corning  into  delicate  leaf.  Archie's 
somewhat  ostentatious  repetitions  of  a  verse  new  to 
him  and  wonderful  to  her,  beginning: 

"  Twinkle,  twinkle,  little  star," 

had  filled  both  children  with  an  ardent  desire  to  wit- 
ness the  phenomenon.  Suddenly  a  light  shone  dim 
and  far  away  close  to  the  horizon,  and  Katherine, 
seizing  Archie's  hand,  cried:  "See,  Artie,  see!  a  star! 
a  star!" 

"  Pooh!  that  is  n't  a  star,"  was  Archie's  scornful  re- 
joinder. "It  's  only  a  light  in  a  house." 

A  chill  of  disappointment  seized  the  little  girl.  She 
could  not  doubt  her  oracle,  yet — "  How  can  you  tell? " 
she  ventured  to  ask. 

"Why,  it  doesn't  twinkle!  What  would  be  the 
good  of  a  star  that  didn  't  twinkle  ? ' '  And,  indeed, 
what  would  be  the  good  of  such  an  unnatural  mani- 
festation, regarded  as  a  subject  for  nursery  rhymes? 

Yet,  as  the  children  stood  and  watched  the  sky 
where  soft,  imperceptible  folds  of  shadow  were  deep- 
ening about  the  slowly  brightening  point  of  light, 
little  Katherine  became  breathlessly  aware  that  it  was 
rising,  rising!  See!  it  had  passed  the  level  of  an  elm 
branch,  thrown  sharp  against  the  breadth  of  sky. 
Yes !  it  was  mounting,  and  ah !  how  it  shone ! 

"It  is  a  star!"  the  child  murmured,  under  her 
breath,  and  with  a  curious  uplifting  of  the  little  spirit, 
checked  only  by  the  knowledge  that  Archie  had  been 
mistaken.  For,  indeed,  if  Archie  could  be  mistaken, 
where  was  she  to  turn  for  guidance? 


32  Katherine  Day 

But  Archie,  quite  unabashed,  cried:  "I  don't  care! 
I  would  n't  look  at  an  old  star  that  did  n't  twinkle! " 

"That's  not  a  star,"  said  an  authoritative  voice 
behind  them.  "It  's  a  planet."  Grandmother  Day 
had  stepped  softly  out  on  the  veranda  and  was  looking 
down  upon  the  children.  "The  planets  don't  twin- 
kle," she  added;  "they  always  shine  with  a  steady 
light." 

Then  little  Katherine  looked  up  gratefully  into  the 
handsome,  clean-cut  face  of  the  tall  woman  and  said: 
"I  think  that  's  better  than  twinkling." 

"It  ain't,  though!"  Archie  persisted  stoutly.  "I 
think  it  's  stupid  of  the  old  thing  not  to  twinkle!" 

But  Katherine  in  her  own  heart  was  very  sure  that 
she  liked  to  have  her  stars  shine  with  a  steady  light. 

Three  years  had  gone  by  since  that  May  evening, — 
and  a  year  is  a  long,  long  period  in  the  calendar  of  a 
child, — yet  little  Katherine  Day  at  seven  had  not  lost 
her  preference  for  the  steadily  shining  lights.  She 
had  not  found  many.  The  twinkling  stars  are  more 
numerous  in  every  sky  than  the  glowing  planets,  and 
her  chief  star,  whose  name  was  Archie,  was  pre- 
eminently a  twinkler.  Sometimes  he  seemed  fond  of 
his  little  sister;  again  he  was  haughtily  indifferent, — 
at  another  time  he  appeared  quite  to  dislike  her; 
while  Katherine  was  sure  that  she  always  loved  him 
with  all  her  heart,  even  when  he  had  driven  her  into 
a  passion  of  indignation  and  despair, — a  not  infre- 
quent occurrence  at  the  time  our  story  opens. 

Indeed,  so  great  was  her  love  for  Archie  that  she 
never  thought  of  resenting  the  fact  that  he  was  the 
universal  and  unquestioned  favorite.  There  was 
hardly  a  single  one  of  the  "grown-ups  "  who  presided 
in  a  solemn  circle,  much  like  the  ancient  gods,  over 


To  Some  Good  End  33 

their  childish  destinies  who  did  not  openly  give 
Archie  the  preference  over  Katherine. 

A  clever  Englishman  has  dubbed  the  elders  of  his 
childhood  "the  Olympians,"  and  I  think  that  no  one 
whose  memory  goes  back  to  the  time  when  all  grown 
people  loomed  like  giants  on  the  edges  of  his  youthful 
horizon,  rarely  drawing  near  except  for  purposes  of 
admonition  or  chastisement,  can  fail  to  recognize  the 
fitness  of  the  term.  To  little  Katherine,  at  least,  her 
elders  appeared  much  in  the  light  of  more  or  less,  im- 
placable divinities.  And  if  these  exalted  beings  pre- 
ferred Archie  to  Katherine,  it  was  doubtless  owing  to 
some  innate  superiority  which  their  wisdom  recog- 
nized. 

It  would  appear  that  logic  is  strictly  an  acquired 
faculty,  and  certainly  little  Katherine  was  rarely  put 
out  of  countenance  by  its  dictates.  She  knew,  for 
example,  of  many  particular  instances  in  which  Archie 
had  played  the  part  of  tempter, — in  so  much  that  a 
casual  allusion  in  her  hearing  to  Satan  himself  as 
"the  arch-tempter"  had  established  in  her  mind  an 
unconscious  association  of  ideas  between  that  highly 
disreputable  personage  and  the  fair,  always  capti- 
vating face  of  her  own  "Archie."  Yet  she  did  not 
from  these  instances  reason  that  Archie's  moral  status 
was  lower  than  her  own.  Archie  was  just  Archie, — 
that  was  all  there  was  to  it, — and  if  she  loved  him 
better  than  he  deserved,  and  if  grandmother  and 
Cousin  Elmira  and  Aunt  Anne  were  deceived  in  their 
estimate  of  his  character,  we  may  be  sure  that  his 
loyal  little  sister  would  be  the  last  to  recognize  the 
fact. 

One  of  her  very  earliest  recollections  might  well 
have  served  to  enlighten  her  mind  had  it  been  sus- 


34  Katherine  Day 

ceptible  to  enlightenment.  She  still  remembered, — 
she  always  remembered, — sitting  long,  long  ago  with 
Archie  on  the  floor  of  Grandmother  Day's  parlor, 
listening  to  the  dulcet  strains  of  a  music-box  which 
Aunt  Anne,  recently  returned  with  this  treasure  from 
foreign  shores,  had  wound  up  for  their  delectation. 
Archie,  with  that  propensity  to  mischief  which  never 
seemed  seriously  to  prejudice  his  cause  in  the  eyes  of 
his  elders,  had  on  more  than  one  previous  occasion 
been  betrayed  into  making  such  digital  investigations 
of  the  machinery  as  to  stop  the  pretty  tune  short  off, 
and  Aunt  Anne  had  declared,  with  gentle  decision, 
that  the  next  time  this  occurred  should  be  the  last. 

On  that  day,  so  long  ago,  the  children,  tiny  tots, 
both  of  them,  had  sat  there  in  front  of  the  long  pier- 
glass,  unconscious  of  the  pretty  picture  they  made, 
with  their  two  contrasting  little  heads  bent  close  to- 
gether above  the  magic  box,  and  Archie  had  once 
more  been  seized  with  a  consuming  desire  to  poke  his 
fingers  in  and  arrest  the  mysterious  movement  of  the 
prickly  cylinder.  When  the  child  is  yet  too  small  to 
make,  he  seems  to  reverse  the  impulse  of  creation  and 
find  his  account  with  marring.  And  so  when  little 
Archie  lifted  his  small  face  and  glanced  furtively 
about  in  search  of  some  possible'  marplot  of  larger 
growth,  his  pretty  eyes  were  alight  with  mischief,  and 
his  high,  childish  treble  was  reduced  to  a  peculiarly 
sibilant  whisper,  as  he  declared:  "I  'm  goin'  to  stop 
it." 

The  brown  companion  head  was  lifted,  and  the  big, 
serious  dark  eyes  behind  their  long  lashes  met  his 
with  a  look  of  fearsome  admiration. 

"Is  you,  Artie?"  little  Katherine  queried. 

"Yes.     An'  you  must  never  tell.     Promise!" 


To  Some  Good  End  35 

"  Not  aless  she  asts,"  was  little  Katherine's  cheerful 
response. 

"  If  she  asks,  all  you  've  got  to  do  is  to  say  no.  That 
won't  hurt  you!" 

The  scornful  superiority  with  which  this  dictum  was 
enunciated  carried  the  day;  and  thus  it  came  to  pass 
that  little  Katherine  told  her  first  lie.  For,  as  the 
pretty  tinkling  stopped,  nipping  the  Carnival  of  Venice 
in  the  bud,  so  to  speak,  Aunt  Anne,  one  of  the  tallest 
and  by  far  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the  goddesses, 
came  gliding  in  with  the  ship-like  motion  induced  by 
the  apparent  absence  of  feet  which  characterized  the 
ladies  of  that  day,  and,  towering  high  above  the  chil- 
dren, put  the  crucial  question:  Had  Archie  stopped 
the  music-box? 

No;  Archie  had  done  nothing  of  the  kind,  if  Archie's 
own  statement  was  to  be  accepted.  But  Grandmother 
Day,  rustling  stiffly  in  the  wake  of  the  ship-like  Aunt 
Anne,  suggested  that  Katherine  be  examined. 

"Katherine  is  a  truthful  child,"  she  declared,  with 
that  careful  but  quite  unenthusiastic  justice  for  which 
she  was  noted. 

And  then  and  there  it  was  that  little  Katherine 
learned  by  a  cruel  pang  and  a  sense  of  degradation 
quite  beyond  her  years,  that,  in  spite  of  the  expe- 
rienced Archie's  assurance  to  the  contrary,  telling  lies 
did  hurt.  For  she  told  her  lie  pluckily,  one  might 
almost  say  honestly,  as  her  nature  was,  and  the  music- 
box  was  duly  started  up  again.  But  neither  the 
Carnival  of  Venice  nor  yet  the  Maiden's  Lament  which 
followed  sadly  upon  the  tripping  measure  of  its  prede- 
cessor had  consolation  for  the  fallen  spirit. 

The  little  girl  had  lifted  her  head  defiantly,  scorning 
to  succumb  outwardly  to  a  bad  conscience,  and  there 


36  Katherine  Day 

in  the  long  mirror  she  had  beheld  the  small  family 
group  reflected  in  pictorial  distinctness  within  the 
gilt  frame:  the  beautiful  Aunt  Anne,  in  her  flowing 
draperies  of  immaculate  dove  color;  Grandmother  Day 
all  in  black,  with  her  black  hair  and  her  keen  black 
eyes;  Archie's  pretty  uplifted  face,  beaming  with  ex- 
aggerated innocence;  and  among  them  all  a  little 
brown  blot  in  a  high-necked,  long-sleeved  gingham 
apron,  above  which  the  little  brown  visage  with  its 
brown  eyes  and  mop  of  shingled  brown  hair  struck 
its  owner  as  the  very  personification  of  evil. 

Strangely  enough,  little  Katherine  did  not  then  or 
afterward  give  much  thought  to  the  moral  aspect  of 
Archie's  attitude  in  this  shocking  affair.  It  was  with 
her  own  conscience  that  she  had  to  deal,  and  so  trou- 
blesome did  that  very  active  monitor  make  itself  that 
she  had  scant  leisure  for  resentment  toward  the  sole 
instigator  of  her  crime.  The  lie  had  certainly  hurt, 
and  it  was  she  it  had  hurt;  and  it  was  the  conscious- 
ness of  her  own  hurt  that  she  carried  about  with  her 
for  days,  that  was  never,  indeed,  wholly  effaced  from 
her  memory. 

If  little  Katherine  had  lived  on  terms  of  easy  con- 
fidence with  her  elders,  she  would  doubtless  Have 
made  a  clean  breast  of  the  matter,  and  before  she  slept 
her  sin  might  have  been  forgiven  and  forgotten.  But 
that  was  not  so  much  the  way  of  her  day  and  genera- 
tion as  of  ours,  even  between  mother  and  child;  and 
there  was  little  in  the  personality  of  Grandmother  Day 
or  Cousin  Elmira  or  even  of  Aunt  Anne  to  invite  a 
childish  confidence. 

Yet  Aunt  Anne  was  the  favorite  divinity  of  Kath- 
erine's  childhood.  She  was  tall  and  fair  and  the  pos- 
sessor of  a  very  winning  smile, — to  say  nothing  of  a 


To  Some  Good  End  37 

ravishing  wardrobe.  There  was  one  richly  embroi- 
dered blue  velvet  circular  in  particular,  known  in  the 
family  as  "Anne's  Lyons  velvet  cape,"  which  seemed 
to  Katherine  a  fit  garment  for  fairy  queen  or  mortal 
princess.  Its  rich  folds  of  heavenly  color  and  deli- 
cious texture  had  a  way  of  falling  about  the  slender, 
shapely  form  in  a  manner  to  captivate  any  heart, — so 
that  it  was  very  little  wonder,  though  matter  for  ex- 
treme regret,  when  a  bearded,  masterful  person,  ex- 
pressing a  quite  unexplained  wish  to  be  addressed  as 
"Uncle  Theodore,"  came  presently  and  carried  Aunt 
Anne  away  for  good  and  all,  before  ever  Katherine 
had  had  a  chance  to  become  really  intimate  with  her; 
not,  however,  before  the  name  of  Aunt  Anne  had  got 
itself  enrolled  in  the  list  of  beneficiaries  to  be  presented 
each  evening  in  her  little  niece's  prayers. 

At  an  unusually  early  age  the  child  had  been  left 
to  carry  on  her  own  religious  exercises,  which  she  did 
punctiliously  every  night,  following,  with  a  docility 
hardly  to  be  expected,  in  the  lines  laid  down  for  her 
by  her  original  instructor.  First  came  "Now  I  lay 
me,"  then  "Our  Father,"  and  then  "God  bless."  It 
was  only  in  this  third  division  that  she  allowed  herself 
some  liberty  of  expression,  and  when  she  arrived  at 
Aunt  Anne's  name,  the  fifth  on  the  list,  she  always 
indicated  with  unmistakable  explicitness  that  it  was 
"beautiful  Aunt  Anne"  that  she  meant,  in  careful 
contradistinction  to  a  very  ugly  and  unprepossessing 
Great-Aunt  Anne  whom  she  had  seen  but  twice,  and 
the  identity  of  whose  Christian  name  with  that  of  her 
favorite  might,  she  feared,  confuse  the  heavenly  coun- 
sels. Katherine  bore  no  ill-will  toward  the  ugly  Aunt 
Anne,  but  she  did  not  consider  herself  called  upon  to 
include  her  in  her  benediction. 


38  Katherine  Day 

Little  Katherine 's  religious  life  had  always  been  a 
very  real  and  vital  one,  and,  curiously  enough,  it  com- 
prised many  depressing,  not  to  say  terrifying  ideas. 
Curiously,  because  the  child  had  been  brought  up 
under  that  form  of  religion  which  takes  a  hopeful  view 
of  human  nature  and  consequently  of  human  destiny. 

Perhaps  it  was  because  of  its  novelty  that  the  doc- 
trine of  eternal  punishment,  first  inculcated  in  her 
mind  by  a  nursery  maid,  took  such  strong  hold  upon 
her  imagination.  She  did  not  for  a  moment  question 
its  truth,  and  from  the  very  beginning  it  had  a  grue- 
some fascination  for  her.  It  was  perhaps  the  dramatic 
suggestiveness  of  the  doctrine  which  appealed  to  her, — 
certainly  not  any  expectation  of  being  herself  counted 
among  the  elect.  So  persuaded  was  she,  indeed,  of 
the  tragic  destiny  in  store  for  her  that  in  the  occa- 
sional moments  of  pusillanimity  to  which  she  was 
subject  she  used  quite  to  envy  animals  and  flowers 
and  even  articles  of  furniture  because  they  at  least 
were  exempt  in  the  future,  whatever  might  be  their 
disadvantages  in  the  present.  There  was  a  certain 
chair  in  her  grandmother's  parlor,  a  spindle-legged 
chair  with  a  covering  of  yellow  damask,  with  which 
she  frequently  desired  to  exchange  places  in  the 
scheme  of  things.  It  was  a  pretty  chair,  to  begin 
with,  and  uneventful  as  its  career  might  be,  it  was  at 
least  treated  with  consideration  in  this  world, — owing 
doubtless  to  its  manifest  fragility, — and  it  might  look 
forward  with  entire  confidence  to  a  future,  be  it  long 
or  short,  untormented  by  hell-fires.  Yes,  Katherine 
sometimes  felt  that  she  should  like  to  have  been 
created  a  spindle-legged,  yellow-covered  chair. 

And  yet,  for  all  that,  and  for  all  that,  little  Kath- 
erine was  by  no  means  a  pitiable  child.  Rather,  she 


To  Some  Good  End  39 

was  a  child  of  rich  and  varied  experience,  an  expe- 
rience fed  largely  from  within,  and  therefore  not  sub- 
ject to  ordinary  limitations;  and  being  blessed  with 
a  sound  constitution  and  much  elasticity  of  tempera- 
ment, she  bade  fair  to  weather  the  storms  of  life,  the 
redoubtable  Cousin  Elmira  included,  with  no  serious 
jeopardizing  of  that  "good  end"  so  cheerfully  pre- 
dicted by  the  kindly  dispenser  of  carnal  and  spiritual 
consolation. 

And  it  was  characteristic  of  our  small  heroine  that, 
while  the  sense  of  mortification  and  disgrace  attendant 
upon  her  daring  venture  on  the  high  beam  became  less 
poignant  from  day  to  day,  the  exhilarating  recollec- 
tion of  her  bold  achievement  and  of  the  flattering  in- 
terpretation put  upon  her  preservation  lost  none  of 
its  inspiring  character.  So  that  we  may  take  to  heart 
the  consoling  thought  that  little  Katherine's  mother- 
less fate  was  not  without  its  ameliorations;  that  per- 
haps, after  all,  she  had  really  been  preserved  "  to  some 
good  end." 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  PRIZE  FISH 

"  Still 

I  mind  how  love  repaired  all  ill, 
Cured  wrong,  soothed  grief,  made  earth  amends, 
With  parents,  brothers,  children,  friends." 

HAPPILY  for  little  Katherine  the  somewhat  dis- 
tant and  perfunctory  intercourse  vouchsafed 
her  with  her  elders  was  neither  her  sole  nor  her  chief 
resource,  socially  speaking.  For  not  only  was  Archie 
a  stimulating  if  not  always  a  sympathetic  companion, 
but  she  possessed  in  Winny  Gerald  the  inseparable 
playmate  and  crony  which  every  child  should  have. 

This  pretty  and  amiable  little  person,  the  value  of 
whose  fair  curls  and  blue  eyes  as  affecting  her  social 
status  could  scarcely  be  overestimated  even  by  the 
admiring  Katherine,  lived  in  a  rather  new  and  pre- 
tentious house  of  the  ginger-bread  variety,  not  far 
from  the  plainer  dwelling  which  Mr.  Charles  Day  had 
the  good  taste  to  prefer.  He,  by  the  way,  like  all  the 
Days  of  Camwood,  was  well  to  do,  and  quite  at  liberty 
to  build  him  as  new  and  ugly  a  mansion  as  any  in  that 
charming  suburb.  To  little  Katherine,  however,  her 
father's  financial  ease  would  have  been  a  matter  of 
complete  indifference  even  if  she  had  been  aware  of 
it;  for  the  wealth  of  a  Crossus  would  not  have  altered 


The  Prize  Fish  41 

Cousin  Elmira's  fixed  preference  for  magenta  in  the 
selection  of  the  little  girl's  wardrobe, — a  color  which 
the  child  abhorred, — nor  would  that  exercise  of  hos- 
pitality toward  her  own  contemporaries  have  been 
permitted  her  for  which  her  soul  vainly  longed. 
Cousin  Elmira  considered  that  two  children  in  the 
house  were  a  sufficient  tax  upon  her  patience,  and  it 
was  well  understood  that  no  further  invasion  of  the 
grown-up  decorum  would  be  tolerated. 

Katherine,  meanwhile,  if  she  gave  a  thought  to  the 
matter,  supposed  that  the  Geralds  must  be  very  rich 
and  great  people  to  live  in  so  magnificent  a  house; 
but  this  awoke  no  envy  in  her  breast.  Neither  did 
she  envy  Winny  her  fabulous  allowance  of  twenty- 
five  cents  a  week,  although  that  sum  represented 
a  quite  incalculable  amount  of  chocolate  drops,  to 
say  nothing  of  numberless  sheets  of  bright  colored 
paper  for  the  arraying  of  home-made  paper  dolls.  No, 
the  object  of  little  Katherine's  envy  was  neither  wealth 
nor  the  luxuries  wealth  could  purchase,  but  rather 
those  personal  advantages  which  command  the  hom- 
age of  one's  fellow  creatures;  and  even  these  Kath- 
erine would  not  have  wished  wrested  from  her  little 
friend.  If  she  could  have  had  her  choice  she  would 
have  been  so  exactly  like  Winny  Gerald  in  every  par- 
ticular that  their  best  friends  could  scarcely  have 
told  them  apart.  She  would  not  only  have  had 
Winny 's  sunny  curls,  but  she  would  also  have  emu- 
lated Winny's  captivating  manner  of  tossing  them 
out  of  her  eyes ;  she  would  not  only  have  chosen  eyes 
to  match  Winny's,  but  she  would  have  had  them 
"squinny  up"  and  almost  disappear,  exactly  as  Win- 
ny's did  when  she  laughed, — a  phenomenon  which 
Katherine  never  tired  of  observing.  In  a  word,  she 


42  Katherine  Day 

would  not  only  have  possessed  Winny's  charms,  she 
would  have  worn  them  with  Winny's  grace.  Yes,  it 
must  indeed  be  easy  to  be  good  when  everybody 
loved  you. 

"  I  tell  you  what  let's  play,  Winny !  you  be  a  queen 
and  I  '11  be  a  gypsy  woman  that  's  come  to  tell  your 
fortune ! ' ' 

The  little  girls  had  been  jumping  rope  together 
until  Winny  had  called  a  halt,  and  now  they  were 
established  on  the  piazza,  where  Katherine  was  al- 
lowed to  receive  one  guest  at  a  time  on  the  condition 
that  they  should  not  run  up  and  down  or  make  them- 
selves otherwise  audible  to  Cousin  Elmira.  Kather- 
ine had  left  off  jumping  rope  with  the  greatest 
reluctance,  for  not  only  was  she  a  very  strong  child, 
but  she  was  liable  to  an  absorbing  enthusiasm  in 
whatever  she  was  doing,  which  made  it  nearly  always 
an  affliction  to  stop.  If  she  was  skating  all  by  her- 
self on  a  frozen  gutter  in  the  chill  of  a  winter  sun- 
down, she  was  apt  to  be  so  ardently  desirous  of  one 
more  turn  that  she  was  more  than  likely  to  come  home 
late  and  be  sent  to  bed  without  her  supper;  if  pick- 
ing currants  in  her  grandmother's  garden  chanced  to 
be  the  absorbing  interest  of  the  moment,  she  could 
not  bear  to  stop  when  her  pail  was  full;  or  let  her 
occupation  be  nothing  more  inherently  delectable 
than  adding  long  columns  of  figures  at  sight  on  a 
card  provided  the  school  children  for  that  exercise, 
she  was  never  content  with  one  column,  but  longed 
for  another.  It  was  not  merely  that  she  was  en- 
dowed with  unusual  endurance;  it  was  chiefly  that 
her  zest  for  work  or  play  was  practically  inexhaustible ; 
a  surfeit  was  something  the  child  had  never  expe- 
rienced. And  so  she  had  found  it  hard  to  be 


The  Prize  Fish  43 

reconciled  when  Winny  had  said  she  was  tired  and 
could  n't  jump  any  more. 

They  were  quite  big  girls  by  this  time,  "going  on 
eleven,"  as  the  saying  is,  and  Katherine's  imagina- 
tion had  been  recently  fired  by  a  history  book  in 
which  kings  and  queens  figured  largely  and  bril- 
liantly. 

"You  be  a  queen,"  she  said;  "and  I  '11  be  a  gypsy 
woman  come  to  tell  your  fortune." 

"I  don't  see  how  I  can  be  a  queen  without  a 
crown,"  Winny  objected,  taking  off  her  hat  and 
throwing  it  down,  as  if  to  prepare  her  head  for  that 
pleasing  decoration,  should  a  discriminating  chance 
see  fit  to  provide  it. 

The  long  summer  vacation  had  come,  and  the 
children,  in  the  luxury  of  idleness,  were  sitting  on 
the  edge  of  the  piazza  with  their  feet  hanging  over. 
The  sun  shone  full  in  their  faces,  and,  as  Katherine 
turned  a  sympathetic  eye  upon  the  uncrowned  head, 
she  found  that  the  sunbeams  were  getting  caught  in 
the  stray  locks  of  hair  which  the  soft  breeze  lifted 
lightly. 

"If  I  had  some  hairpins,"  she  remarked,  "I  could 
make  a  crown  out  of  your  curls.  They  look  ex- 
actly like  gold." 

"Pooh!  that  would  n't  be  any  good,"  said  Winny 
contemptuously.  "Nobody  would  take  any  notice 
of  a  kind  of  crown  that  anybody  could  have." 

"Anybody  could  n't,  though,"  Katherine  de- 
clared. "I  could  n't!" — and  she  put  her  hand  up 
regretfully  to  her  own  round  head,  whose  dark, 
straight  growth  was  still  kept  at  that  ugly  length 
which  requires  a  round-comb  for  its  subjection. 

Winny,  who  had  a  cheerful  way  of  taking  other 


44  Katharine  Day 

people's  disabilities  for  granted,  was  still  concerned 
for  the  regal  insignia  which  were  so  manifestly  her 
right. 

"  I  wish,"  she  said,  "that  I  had  n't  used  up  all  my 
gilt  paper  on  a  ball  dress  for  Arabella.  We  could 
have  cut  it  in  points  and  pinned  it  round." 

"Oh!  I  tell  you,"  Katherine  cried,  with  renewed 
animation.  "We  '11  make  one  of  dandelions!"  and 
she  jumped  down  from  her  perch  and  began  gather- 
ing the  yellow  weed  with  which  the  lawn  was 
strewn. 

"Oh,  no;  dandelions  are  horrid.  They  wilt  right 
down,  and  they  smell  queer." 

"And  the  stems  don't  stay  tied,"  Katherine  ad- 
mitted regretfully. 

"  I  guess  you  had  better  come  back  and  we  '11  play 
I  've  just  taken  my  crown  off  'cause  it  hurt  my 
head." 

"And  of  course  a  gypsy  would  know  you  were  a 
queen  by  the  gift  of  second  sight!" 

Then  Katherine  looked  doubtfully  at  the  handful 
of  blossoms  she  had  gathered.  She  did  not  like  to 
throw  them  away. 

"I  think  I  '11  stick  them  in  my  hair.  Gypsies 
wear  flowers  in  their  hair,  don't  they?"  and  lifting 
the  round-comb  she  tucked  the  questionably  orna- 
mental blossoms  underneath.  "There,"  she  added, 
"I  guess  they  like  that  better  than  not  being  any 
good  at  all.  Do  I  look  like  a  gypsy?" 

"Yes;  exactly,"  was  Winny's  hasty  rejoinder. 
"Now  come  and  tell  my  fortune." 

She  rather  objected  to  the  gypsy  part  being  made 
too  prominent,  aside  from  its  manifest  purpose,  the 
glorification  of  her  own  future;  and  Katherine,  who 


The   Prize  Fish  45 

was  quite  of  her  way  of  thinking,  ran  up  the  steps  of 
the  piazza  and,  dropping  like  a  bird  upon  her  perch, 
abandoned  herself  to  the  spirit  of  prophecy. 

"You  '11  be  very  rich  and  powerful,"  she  began, 
gazing  admiringly  at  Winny's  uncrowned  head. 

"Why,  of  course!  I  'm  that  already,  if  I  'm  a 
queen!"  Winny  interposed. 

"Well,  you  '11  stay  rich  and  powerful;  some  queens 
lose  their  crowns,  you  know, — and  even  their  heads," 
— with  that  sudden  reminiscence  which  ensures  the 
unhappy  Anne  Boleyn's  immortality  in  every  child- 
ish mind.  "And  you  '11  grow  richer  and  power- 
fuller  all  the  time!" 

"Don't  you  think  you  ought  to  say  'your  Ma- 
jejty'?"  the  small  queen  demurred. 

"I  suppose  so;  but  how  funny  it  sounds!  'Your 
Majesty'!  Somehow  it  seems  sort  of  ridiculous,  as 
if  you  were  just  Winny  after  all." 

"I  don't  see  why!  Anyhow,  you  've  got  to  say 
'  your  Majesty'  when  you  are  talking  to  a  queen." 

"Well  then,  your  Majesty  will  be  the  greatest 
queen  in  the  world;  and  you  '11  make  all  your  sub- 
jects happy,  and  whenever  you  walk  abroad  the 
poor  will  gather  round  you  and  bless  you." 

"That  is  n't  a  bit  my  idea  of  a  queen,"  Winny  ob- 
jected. "Tell  about  the  clothes  I  shall  wear  and 
the  jewels  and — who  's  going  to  be  king? " 

"Oh!  of  course!"  cried  Katherine,  with  enthusi- 
asm. "You  will  marry — I  mean  your  Majesty  will 
deign  to  bestow  your  hand — on  the  most  mag- 
nificent prince  that  ever  trod  the  earth.  He  will 
come  with  a  great  retinue  to  pay  you  court,  and  he 
will  be  as  good  and  as  beautiful  as  he  is  great,  and  he 
will  have  a  wonderful  mind,  and  a  generous  soul, 


46  Katherine  Day 

and  the  courage  of  a  lion,  and  when  you  look  at  him 
you  will  forget  everybody  else  and  long  to  go  away 
with  him  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  with — nobody  to 
interrupt ! ' ' 

In  spite  of  this  rather  lame  anti-climax,  Kather- 
ine's  eyes  were  flashing  with  excitement  and  her 
cheeks  were  flushed.  The  dandelions  were  already 
hanging  their  heads,  the  life  quite  squeezed  out  of 
them  between  the  teeth  of  the  round-comb;  and 
Winny  felt  a  sudden  magnanimous  impulse  to  re- 
pay the  generous  soothsayer  in  kind. 

"Now  I'll  tell  your  fortune,"  she  cried,  seizing 
Katherine 's  small  brown  paw  and  spreading  it  open 
with  a  fine  appearance  of  understanding  palmistry. 

The  gypsy,  who,  in  the  enthusiasm  of  prophetic 
fervor,  had  quite  forgotten  to  examine  the  royal 
hand,  glanced  down  at  her  own  grimy  palm,  streaked 
with  green  stains  from  the  dandelion  stems,  and 
shook  her  head  doubtfully. 

"There  does  n't  seem  to  be  anything  left  for 
me,"  she  objected. 

"Oh,  yes,  there  is,"  was  the  queen's  patronizing 
rejoinder.  "But  of  course  a  gypsy  would  n't  ex- 
pect to  marry  a  prince!" 

"No — I  s'pose  not;  and  I  should  n't  care  so  much 
about  his  being  a  prince.  But  then  your  prince  was 
not  only  a  prince,  but  the  best  and  the  kindest  and 
the  bravest  person  that  ever  lived." 

"Well,  you  might  have  the  next  best!" 

"No,  I  don't  believe  I  should  want  him.  I  don't 
like  second-best  things." 

"But  Katherine!"  Winny  cried  impatiently.  "If 
only  one  person  in  the  world  can  have  the  best,  how 
could  you  expect  that  you  would  be  the  one  ? ' ' 


The  Prize  Fish  47 

"I  never  expected  any  such  thing,"  Katherine 
protested.  "  I  only  said  I  'd  rather  go  without.  And 
I  expect  to  go  without." 

"Well,  I  think  you  are  very  unreasonable !"  Winny 
declared,  with  quite  a  contemptuous,  hostile  look  at 
the  poor  gypsy. 

Then  Katherine  laughed. 

"Is  n't  it  funny?"  she  said.  "We  were  getting 
quite  mad  about  something  that  is  n't  anything  any- 
how!— Oh,  there  's  Archie  coming  home!  Now  we 
shall  have  some  fun!" — and  the  little  girl  again 
dropped  off  the  piazza  and  ran  down  the  walk  to 
meet  her  brother. 

Master  Archie,  who  happened  to  be  in  condescend- 
ing humor,  said,  "Hullo,  Puss,"  and  laid  his  arm 
across  her  shoulder  as  they  walked  up  the  path  to- 
gether. Little  did  she  care  about  princes  and 
dominations  any  more;  indeed,  she  felt  quite  sorry 
for  Winny,  who,  for  all  her  brilliant  prospects, 
had  n't  any  big  brother  to  call  her  Puss.  And,  in- 
deed, Archie,  just  entering  upon  his  teens,  had 
grown  into  a  tall,  handsome  boy,  whom  a  sister  less 
prejudiced  than  Katherine  might  have  been  proud 
of. 

"I  know  something  nice,"  he  declared,  with  an 
important  air,  as  they  came  up  the  piazza  steps. 

Winny  had  stood  up  and  was  eagerly  ready  for  the 
fun  which  Katherine  had  so  confidently  predicted. 

"Oh!  what  is  it?"  the  little  girls  cried  in  one 
breath. 

"It  's  very  nice  indeed." 

"Please  tell  us,"  they  cried  again,  as  promptly  and 
simultaneously  as  a  Greek  chorus. 

"Well,  in  the  first  place,  it  's  most  dinner-time!" 


48  Katherine  Day 

"Oh!"  and  the  Greek  chorus  assumed  an  indig- 
nant droop. 

"And  after  dinner  T  'm  going  fishing  with  father!" 

"Oh!"  and  there  was  an  almost  painful  suspense 
in  the  inflection  of  Katherine's  "Oh." 

' '  And  I  am  going  to  ask  him  to  take  you  girls  with 
us!" 

"Oh,  Archie!  how  good  you  are!  Do  you  suppose 
he  will?" 

"Oh,  yes!  He  will  if  I  ask  him!"  was  the  reply, 
given  with  a  touch  of  self-consciousness  which  es- 
caped criticism.  For  the  girls  were  naturally  not 
aware  that  he  had  overheard  his  father  ordering  the 
carryall,  a  vehicle  manifestly  larger  than  two  passen- 
gers could  possibly  require.  There  was  consequently 
nothing  to  shake  their  faith  in  Archie's  beneficent 
influence  when,  a  couple  of  hours  later,  the  two  little 
girls  found  themselves  established  in  the  roomy  back 
seat  of  the  carryall,  as  it  bowled  along  toward  the  open 
country  at  the  willing  heels  of  old  Chief. 

If  the  manly  contingent  of  the  company  somewhat 
impeded  their  view  of  Chief's  tail  and  ears, — the  most 
delectable  sight  in  the  world,  to  Katherine's  thinking, 
— she  did  not  cavil  at  the  circumstance.  On  the 
contrary,  she  was  far  too  grateful  to  the  wearers  of 
coat  and  jacket  to  give  a  thought  to  unsatisfied 
longings. 

It  was  a  glorious  summer's  day,  the  ardor  of  the 
sun  tempered  by  a  touch  of  that  east  wind  whose 
harshness,  like  the  Puritan  tang  in  the  New  England 
character,  is  apt  to  repel  the  uncomprehending  out- 
sider. To  the  children  there  was  exhilaration  in  it, 
shared  apparently  by  old  Chief  himself,  who,  with  his 
long,  reaching  stride,  got  over  the  ground  at  a  rate 


The  Prize  Fish  49 

which  would  have  been  creditable  to  a  younger  than 
he. 

The  great  black  beast,  whose  record  for  speed  was 
only  exceeded  by  his  well-earned  reputation  for  do- 
cility, was  somewhat  the  senior  of  all  the  party  ex- 
cepting his  master;  but  not  one  of  the  children  was 
more  susceptible  to  the  holiday  spirit  than  this  faith- 
ful friend.  He  had  long  been  intermittently  engaged 
in  teaching  the  two  children  to  drive,  and  a  better 
teacher  they  could  hardly  have  had,  as  Charles  Day 
had  more  than  once  declared.  For  Chief  was  so 
lightly  biddable  that  even  their  childish  voices  could 
stay  his  fastest  stride ;  while  not  the  feeblest  pressure 
of  the  bit  was  lost  upon  him. 

As  long  ago  as  Katherine  could  remember  she  had 
stood  between  her  father's  knees,  with  tiny  hands 
clinging  to  the  heavy  leathers  just  below  his  own 
strong  grasp,  and  giving  little  futile  pulls  to  right  or 
left  as  he  directed.  And,  now  that  she  was  some- 
times allowed  to  take  independent  charge  of  the  reins, 
the  noble  old  horse  had  developed  quite  remarkable 
judgment  in  the  cause  of  her  education.  For  when 
Katherine,  lost  in  admiration  for  some  gay  passing 
garden,  or  her  gaze  perhaps  arrested  by  a  flight  of 
wild  duck,  would  pull  the  wrong  rein,  the  gentle  giant 
would  connive  with  her  father  in  bringing  her  face  to 
face  with  the  consequences  of  her  carelessness, — as 
represented  in  a  ditch,  perhaps,  or  a  pile  of  stones, 
— but  never  without  a  warning  turn  of  the  head  and  a 
slackening  of  his  pace. 

Charles  Day,  a  lover  of  horses  himself,  had  always 
encouraged  the  taste  in  his  children,  and  he  had  long 
talked  of  buying  a  pony  for  them  to  ride.  At  first 
they  had  lived  in  momently  expectation  of  this  en- 


50  Katherine   Day 

chanting  possession ;  but  little  by  little  it  had  receded 
to  those  regions  of  the  future  where  cigars  and  mous- 
taches, long-tailed  gowns,  and  gold  watches  were  laid 
up  in  glittering  but  rather  unsubstantial  promise. 

And  even  Archie  submitted  uncomplainingly  to 
the  hope  deferred,  for  he  well  knew  that  if  his 
father  was  somewhat  lax  in  his  treatment  of 
others,  he  was  none  the  less  strict  in  exacting  ab- 
solute submission  from  his  children.  He  was  ready 
enough  to  give  them  a  pleasure  when  it  came  in  his 
way,  and  he  indulged  in  many  an  air-castle  for  them 
as  well  as  for  himself ;  but  at  any  given  moment  they 
must  not  tease.  And  so  the  children  learned,  very 
much  as  their  elders  do,  to  take  the  goods  the  gods 
bestow  without  insisting  upon  the  fulfilment  of 
lapsed  pledges. 

On  this  particular  afternoon  Archie  was  driving, 
and  Archie's  father  appeared  much  occupied  with 
his  cigar,  which  did  not  seem  to  relish  the  east  wind. 
As  he  relighted  it  for  the  third  time,  he  remarked: 
"  I  think  we  shall  have  to  have  a  prize  for  the  biggest 
fish.  I  wonder  who  will  get  it  ?" 

"Archie!"  cried  Katherine,  without  a  moment's 
hesitation. 

"What  makes  you  think  so?" 

"  'Cause  he  knows  how,  and  we  don't!" 

"But  supposing  the  fish  don't  know  that  he  knows 
how?  Perhaps  they  '11  take  your  bait  by  mistake. 
Fish  are  not  so  very  intelligent." 

Now  Katherine  had  never  before  thought  of  fish 
as  having  any  intelligence  whatever,  and  conse- 
quently she  had  taken  it  for  granted  that  they  were 
also  devoid  of  sensibility.  The  suggestion,  though 
negatively  put,  was  very  disturbing  to  her;  for  she 


The  Prize  Fish  51 

was  philosopher  enough  to  have  observed  that  feel- 
ing and  intelligence  go  hand  in  hand. 

"I  did  n't  suppose  fishes  knew  anything  at  all," 
she  declared  in  some  anxiety. 

"No?  Then  you  never  saw  one  of  them  wink  at 
you  when  he  had  been  smelling  of  the  bait  and  de- 
cided not  to  take  it!" 

"Oh!  you  are  making  fun!"  she  cried,  somewhat 
relieved. 

"What  do  you  think  about  it,  Winny?"  Mr.  Day 
asked. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  was  Winny 's  discreet  re- 
joinder. "  I  never  caught  but  one,  and  he  shut  his 
eyes  up  tight  and  never  opened  them  again." 

"Did  n't  he  wriggle?"  Archie  inquired,  turning 
sharp  about,  and  thereby  sending  Chief  diagonally 
across  the  wide  country  road. 

"Mind  your  reins,  Archie,"  his  father  admon- 
ished; "or  I  '11  put  you  in  the  back  seat!" 

"No,  he  did  n't  wriggle.  He  just  gasped  and 
stiffened  right  out!"  and  at  this  point  in  the  con- 
versation, Katherine  resolved  that  no  prize,  how- 
ever dazzling,  should  tempt  her  to  catch  a  fish.  And 
since  they  had  but  two  fishing-rods  her  resolution 
fell  in  very  conveniently  with  the  preference  of  the 
others,  and  roused  no  remonstrance. 

It  was  a  blissful  two  hours  that  the  children  spent 
floating  on  the  broad,  shining  pond,  unmindful  of 
the  broiling  sun.  Katherine  sat  perched  in  the  high 
bow  of  the  boat,  to  be  well  out  of  the  way.  She  was 
perhaps  the  happiest  of  them  all,  for  she  could 
hardly  be  expected  to  share  the  chagrin  of  the  would- 
be  fishermen  when  the  fish  gently  but  firmly  refused 
to  bite.  She  rather  wondered  that  they  should 


5 2  Katherine  Day 

not  treat  her  father's  overtures  more  respectfully, 
but  even  that  enthusiastic  fisherman  failed  to  lure  a 
single  victim  to  his  hook. 

As  the  sun  got  lower,  it  began  doing  enchanting 
things  to  the  quiet  sheet  of  water,  and  to  the  tree- 
tops  and  the  grassy  spaces  on  the  shore.  Even  the 
ugly  ice-houses,  huddled  together  at  one  end,  got 
wrapped  in  a  kind  of  sun-shot  shimmer  that  was 
highly  becoming.  Katherine  did  not  know  how 
beautiful  it  was,  nor  did  she  understand  anything 
about  the  subtle  chords  in  her  own  nature  whose 
sensitive  response  to  the  beauty  she  looked  upon  was 
deepening  the  sense  of  joy  within  her.  She  only 
knew  that  she  was  happy,  happy,  happy,  and  that 
she  loved  everybody  and  everything,  and  that  she 
was  never,  never  going  to  be  a  naughty  girl  again. 
These  feelings  were  not  articulate  enough  to  be  called 
thoughts,  but  that  was  the  meaning  they  had  to  her. 

Presently  Archie  put  down  his  rod  in  disgust  and 
came  to  join  her  at  her  post.  Her  father  was  sitting 
with  his  back  to  them,  the  oars  crossed  on  his  knees, 
while  he  helped  Winny  with  her  rod  and  line. 

Suddenly, — "See  that  water-lily!"  Archie  whis- 
pered: "There,  there!  don't  you  see  it?" 

Now  they  were  over  the  deep  middle  of  the  pond, 
where  the  longest-stemmed  water-lily  that  ever 
grew  could  not  have  reached  the  surface,  and,  more- 
over, not  a  water-lily  had  ever  been  seen  in  Fisher's 
Pond.  But  Katherine  could  not  know  that. 

"Oh!  let  's  get  it!"  she  cried  under  her  breath. 
"See,  we  are  floating  toward  it!" 

Archie  meanwhile  had  perceived  his  mistake. 
The  water-lily  was  but  a  figment  of  his  imagina- 
tion;— only  a  floating  leaf  in  fact,  gleaming  in  the 


The  Prize  Fish  53 

sunshine.  But  he  did  not  want  to  own  that  he  had 
been  wrong,  and  he  did  not  think  Katherine  would 
discover  his  blunder.  She  was  kneeling  on  the  seat, 
reaching  toward  the  point  of  light  as  they  ap- 
proached, so  much  absorbed  in  the  effort  of  keeping 
her  balance  that  she  scarcely  took  in  the  contour  of 
the  deceptive  leaf. 

"You  'd  better  be  careful,"  Archie  whispered; 
but  before  the  words  were  fairly  spoken,  she  had 
made  a  sudden  movement  that  cost  her  her  balance, 
and,  as  the  boy  clutched  wildly  at  her  dress,  he  felt 
it  slip  through  his  fingers,  and  saw  her  vanish  with 
a  great  splash  beneath  the  water. 

One  cry  of  horror  from  Archie,  an  answering 
scream  from  Winny,  and  Charles  Day  had  turned 
and  was  on  his  feet  with  his  coat  beside  him,  ready 
to  spring. 

Perhaps  the  shock  had  momentarily  paralyzed 
Katherine,  for  although  she  did  not  for  an  instant 
lose  consciousness,  she  did  not  struggle;  and  con- 
sequently she  came  up  to  the  surface  almost  at  once 
and  within  easy  reach  of  the  boat.  Another  moment 
and  she  was  sitting,  dazed  and  drenched  and  chok- 
ing, on  the  middle  seat,  and  she  heard  her  father 
saying  that  this  was  the  last  time  they  should  any 
of  them  ever  again  be  taken  out  on  the  pond. 

"It  was  the  water-lily!"  she  gasped.  "I  was  try- 
ing to  reach  the  water-lily ! ' ' 

"That  is  not  true,"  Charles  answered  severely. 
"There  are  no  water-lilies  in  the  pond." 

Archie  glanced  at  his  little  victim  in  some  trep- 
idation. Would  she  betray  him?  But  no,  there 
had  been  nothing  in  Katherine 's  impromptu  bath  to 
change  her  nature. 


54  Katherine  Day 

"I  thought  I  saw  one,"  she  faltered,  shivering  a 
bit,  —  whereupon  she  found  herself  quite  extin- 
guished and  obliterated  in  the  folds  of  her  father's 
coat. 

The  necessity  of  driving  home  in  his  shirt-sleeves 
did  not  have  a  softening  effect  upon  Mr.  Day's  tem- 
per. He  kept  the  reins  himself,  in  order  to  make  as 
good  time  as  possible  ;  but  to  the  children  it  was  a 
sign  of  deep  displeasure;  and  Archie,  with  the  in- 
consequence of  our  fallen  nature,  felt  as  much  ag- 
grieved as  if  he  had  been  entirely  innocent  of  the 
disaster  which  had  so  changed  the  aspect  of  things. 

Winny,  sitting  beside  Katherine  in  the  back  seat, 
observed  that  modest  decorum  which  always  char- 
acterized her;  for  she  was  one  of  those  happy  little 
girls  who  never  make  trouble.  She  looked  askance 
from  time  to  time  at  the  small  bundle  of  misery  be- 
side her,  and  wondered  why  Katherine  could  not 
have  been  content  to  sit  still  and  let  them  finish  out 
their  holiday  in  peace.  I  am  afraid  she  was  not  as 
sorry  for  Katherine  as  she  ought  to  have  been.  She 
only  felt  that  everybody  was  cross  and  disagreeable, 
and  she  longed  to  get  home. 

Poor  Katherine!  If  she  had  but  had  the  good 
judgment-  to  stay  under  water  a  little  longer,  or  to 
lose  consciousness  at  least, — if  she  could  but  have 
prolonged  the  suspense  of  her  companions  by  a  few 
seconds,  she  might  have  been  rejoiced  over  and 
made  much  of.  But,  with  the  fatality  which  seemed 
to  attend  her  most  promising  efforts  and  adventures, 
even  this  narrow  escape  from  drowning  bade  fair  to 
be  recorded  against  her. 

As  she  sat,  a  damp,  miserable  little  heap,  pain- 
fully conscious  that  she  was  spoiling  the  lining  of  her 


The   Prize   Fish  55 

father's  coat,  she  was  wondering  what  that  floating 
point  of  light  was,  which  had  lured  her  to  her  un- 
doing. Had  Archie  been  deceived  too,  or  was  he  only 
teasing?  She  wished  he  would  not  tease.  Her  eyes 
were  fixed  upon  her  father's  shoulders,  showing 
strong  and  broad  where  the  waistcoat  stopped  and 
the  damp  white  sleeves  began.  She  thought  haw 
good  he  had  been  to  take  them  out  rowing,  and  how 
sorry  she  was  to  displease  him.  Oh,  if  she  were  only 
like  Winny,  if  she  only  never  made  any  trouble! 

Chief  meanwhile  was  trotting  over  the  ground  at 
such  a  rate  that  they  were  passing  everything  on  the 
road,  and  Mr.  Day,  who  loved  to  speed  a  good 
horse  when  there  was  any  occasion  for  it,  was  rapidly 
recovering  his  equanimity.  He  presently  became 
aware  that  none  of  his  passengers  had  spoken  a 
syllable  since  they  left  the  pond  fifteen  minutes 
ago,  and  the  situation  began  to  seem  oppressive.  He 
glanced  over  his  shoulder  at  Katherine,  and  his  eyes 
met  such  a  tragic  little  pair  that  his  heart,  a  soft  if 
not  very  substantial  one,  was  moved  with  pity. 

"Cheer  up,  Katherine,"  he  commanded  in  his  most 
genial  manner.  "It  's  all  over." 

There  was  a  sudden  little  sob  and — "I  'm  so 
sorry!"  a  small,  broken  voice  murmured. 

"Well!  we  are  all  sorry!  But  it  strikes  me  you 
got  the  worst  of  it!  I  don't  suppose  you  meant  to 
drown  yourself,  eh?" 

But  Katherine  could  not  speak  any  more.  She 
just  got  her  little  face  down  among  the  folds  of  the 
coat,  and  held  her  breath,  for  fear  of  spoiling  that 
beatific  situation  by  a  tear  or  a  sob. 

Ten  minutes  later,  as  Chief  stood  in  the  drive- 
way before  the  door,  smoking  and  breathing  deep, 


56  Katharine  Day 

Charles  Day,  tossing  the  reins  over  the  broad  black 
back,  jumped  from  his  seat,  and  taking  little  Kath- 
erine  in  his  arms,  whispered  :  "We  won't  spoil 
Cousin  Elmira's  carpets,  will  we?"  upon  which  he 
ran  lightly  up  the  stairs  and  deposited  the  child  in 
her  own  chamber.  "There,"  he  said,  kindly,  "I  '11 
send  Nora  to  rub  you  down,  and  you  '11  be  good  as 
new  by  supper- time!" 

He  stooped  to  look  into  the  little  face,  where  the 
lip  was  quivering  pitifully. 

"Oh,  Father!"  the  child  sobbed,  and  two  damp 
little  arms  were  flung  around  his  neck,  and  a  damp 
little  head  was  buried  in  his  breast.  This  completed 
the  destruction  of  Mr.  Day's  toilet,  and  it  also 
disturbed  his  composure. 

"There,  little  girl!  never  mind  about  it  any 
more!"  he  whispered.  "We  '11  go  and  get  some 
real  pond-lilies  one  of  these  days,  and  you  shall  pick 
as  many  as  you  like." 

A  moment  later,  as  he  was  closing  the  door  behind 
him,  he  looked  back  to  say,  with  that  flashing  smile 
which  atoned  for  many  shortcomings:  "Seems  to 
me  it  was  I  that  caught  the  big  fish,  after  all!" 

"But  you  did  n't  get  any  prize,"  Katherine  re- 
turned, trying  hard  to  catch  his  light  tone. 

"  I  'm  not  so  sure  of  that!"  cried  Charles  Day,  with 
a  sudden  conviction  that  Katherine  was  a  capital 
little  person  after  all. 

And  from  that  hour  Katherine  adored  her  father 
with  a  grateful,  passionate  adoration.  It  was 
cheaply  won,  and  for  a  long  time  it  was  not  much 
profited  by;  so  that  it  played  but  a  small  part  in 
Charles  Day's  consciousness.  But  for  his  little 
daughter  it  made  life  a  different  thing. 


CHAPTER  V 

A    TRIAL    OF    STRENGTH 

"  Be  sure  that  God 
Ne'er  dooms  to  waste  the  strength  He  deigns  impart!  " 

NOBODY  ever  thought  of  calling  Charles  Day 
selfish,  and  it  is  certain  that  nothing  could 
have  surprised  him  more  than  such  a  stricture  upon 
his  character.  He  was  one  of  those  happily  con- 
stituted mortals  who  create  about  them  so  genial  an 
atmosphere  that  their  neighbors  no  less  than  them- 
selves are  content  rather  to  bask  in  it  than  critically 
to  analyze  its  source.  He  knew  himself  to  be  warm- 
hearted and  generous ; — indeed  that  was  a  patent  fact 
which  could  hardly  have  escaped  a  person  of  his  in- 
telligence,— and  he  was  not  sufficiently  self-critical 
to  consider  that  in  obeying  his  kindly  impulses,  as  in 
the  general  conduct  of  his  life,  he  was  simply  follow- 
ing the  line  of  least  resistance.  Nor  would  justice  be 
done  to  his  character  by  one  who  limited  his  enco- 
miums to  a  consideration  of  his  personal  attractive- 
ness, his  quick  wit,  and  his  easy  generosity.  This 
lineal  descendant  of  many  Puritans  was  as  pure- 
minded  as  he  was  open-handed,  as  incapable  of  de- 
liberate meanness  as  of  blundering  heartlessness. 
Yet  few  men  of  mental  and  moral  training  in  any 
community,  and  fewer  still  of  New  England  blood, 


58  Katherine  Day 

have  grown  up  more  utterly  children  of  nature  than 
he,  or  less  burdened  by  those  trammels  of  conscience 
and  responsibility  which  society  puts  upon  us.  If  a 
witticism  of  his  own  was  true,  namely,  that  he  could 
resist  anything  but  temptation, — and  true  it  cer- 
tainly was, — he  had  every  reason  to  be  thankful  that 
temptation  in  its  graver  forms  did  not  assail  him. 

Neither  did  misfortune  concern  itself  very  much 
with  Charles  Day, — perhaps  because  its  occasional 
attacks  had  been  so  successfully  parried.  The  death 
of  his  wife,  to  be  sure,  which  had  occurred  when  Kath- 
erine was  little  more  than  a  baby,  had  been  a  severe 
strain  upon  his  equanimity,  but  he  soon  found  means 
of  easing  it.  Having  promptly  enlisted  the  services 
of  his  cousin,  Miss  Faxon,  in  behalf  of  his  children, 
thus  securing  to  himself  an  indispensable  freedom  of 
action,  he  had,  within  a  fortnight  of  Lucy's  death, 
departed  for  a  two  years'  sojourn  in  Europe. 

Charles  and  Elmira  had  been  familiar  kinsfolk  all 
their  lives,  and  the  arrangement  thus  entered  upon 
met  with  general  approval.  Elmira  was  but  just  past 
thirty  at  that  time,  but  others  beside  herself  had  for- 
gotten that  she  had  ever  been  young.  Contrary  to 
the  custom  of  the  day,  she  had  continued  living  in  her 
own  house  when  her  father's  death  left  her  its  sole 
mistress,  and  even  as  long  ago  as  that  she  had  been 
counted  among  those  who  are  known,  not  as  un- 
married girls,  but  as  single  women.  Capacity  and 
judgment  were  hers  to  an  unusual  degree,  and  if  these 
went  hand  in  hand  with  a  somewhat  peculiar  and  un- 
fortunate prejudice,  it  was  so  well  concealed  that  even 
Grandmother  Day's  shrewd  perceptions  had  failed  to 
discover  it. 

That  Elmira  Faxon  was  a  reticent  woman  was  well 


A  Trial  of  Strength  59 

understood,  and,  since  she  was  a  New  Englander  of 
the  New  Englanders,  there  was  nothing  particularly 
noteworthy  in  that  circumstance.  The  unique  feat- 
ure of  the  case  consisted  in  the  fact  that  she  was  no 
less  reticent  with  herself  than  with  other  people,  that 
she  often  had  as  little  understanding  of  her  own  sen- 
timents and  motives  as  the  most  indifferent  outsider. 
Thus  she  would  have  been  at  a  loss  to  account  for  the 
dislike  she  had  always  cherished  toward  Mrs.  Charles 
Day,  the  more  so,  perhaps,  because  she  was  well 
aware  that  it  was  strictly  an  idiosyncracy  of  her  own. 
Others,  indeed,  might  criticize  the  vivid,  sensitive 
young  creature  whose  ways  had  been  so  obviously  at 
variance  with  the  somewhat  hard-and-fast  rules  of 
Camwood  etiquette,  but  few  there  were  whose  hearts 
had  not  warmed  to  her,  and  few  were  those  who 
would  not  to-day  have  welcomed  in  little  Katherine 
an  elusive  sort  of  resemblance  to  her  mother  which 
Elmira  alone  believed  herself  to  have  discovered. 
But  if  that  discovery,  imagined  or  otherwise,  involved 
a  transference  to  the  child  of  the  prejudice  which  the 
mother  had  so  unconsciously  excited,  if  it  counted  for 
something  in  the  harshness  with  which  the  little  girl 
was  often  treated,  one  would  suppose  that  it  might 
have  rendered  less  agreeable  Elmira's  task  of  guard- 
ianship; while,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  for  some 
reason  understood  perhaps  by  herself  least  of  all,  Miss 
Faxon  clung  with  a  peculiar  insistence  to  the  duties 
which  were  apparently  so  irksome  to  her.  Indeed 
there  was  probably  nothing  which  she  so  much 
dreaded  as  the  approach  of  the  time  when  little  Kath- 
erine, grown  in  years  and  stature  and  in  that  subtle 
likeness,  should  take  her  rightful  place  at  the  head  of 
her  father's  house. 


60  Katherine  Day 

Charles,  meanwhile,  although  he  rented  an  office 
in  the  city  and  employed  a  clerk,  had  never  yet 
engaged  in  any  active  business.  It  had  been  sup- 
posed that,  as  only  son,  he  would  follow  the 
calling  of  his  father,  a  lawyer  of  distinction,  whose 
influence  would  have  ensured  to  him  every  pro- 
fessional advantage.  But  the  study  of  the  law  had 
proved  too  strenuous  for  the  young  man's  taste, 
and,  having  inherited  a  fortune  from  a  bachelor 
uncle  whose  name  he  bore,  he  had  hitherto  taken  life 
very  easily.  He  intended,  however,  now  that  the 
war  was  over,  and  when  the  country  should  have 
shaken  itself  down  into  some  degree  of  stability,  to 
put  his  capital  into  more  active  use  than  at  present. 
He  had  an  impression  that  he  should  go  into  manu- 
facturing interests,  which  were  sure  to  take  a  start 
as  soon  as  the  mischief  wrought  by  those  troublesome 
rebels  should  have  had  time  to  subside. 

That  he  had  not  taken  a  hand  in  fighting  those  same 
rebels  was  owing,  as  he  believed,  to  a  certain  physical 
disability  inherited  from  his  father,  and  which  had 
caused  his  rejection  at  the  hands  of  the  recruiting 
officers.  It  is  true  that  he  had  been  aware  of  this 
organic  defect  when  he  offered  himself  for  enlistment ; 
yet  it  would  be  unfair  to  say  that  his  promptness  was 
due  to  the  knowledge  that  he  would  be  exempt.  He 
was  not  called  upon  to  decide  what  his  action  would 
have  been  under  other  circumstances,  and  it  is  at 
least  certain  that  he  would  not  have  been  deterred 
from  a  bonafide  enlistment  by  any  lack  of  physical 
courage.  If  he  had  shrunk  from  service,  it  would 
have  been  from  the  inconveniences  and  hardships  of 
camp  life  rather  than  from  the  perils  of  battle.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  however,  he  was  well  content  with  the 


A  Trial  of  Strength  61 

verdict  of  the  examining  physician.  It  was  not  a 
pleasant  thing  to  be  reminded  that  he  was  subject  to 
a  threat  of  mortality, — that  the  same  attack  of  the 
heart  which  had  shortened  his  father's  life  might  cut 
off  his  own  very  agreeable  career ;  but,  as  has  already 
been  stated,  Charles  Day  was  no  coward,  and  he  did 
not  fear  death  even  in  its  more  insidious  approaches. 
But  neither  did  he  dwell  unnecessarily  upon  the 
thought  of  it.  When  the  news  from  the  South  became 
too  painful,  and  the  mortality  among  his  friends  and 
classmates  weighed  too  oppressively  on  his  spirits, — 
even  as,  now  that  the  war  was  over,  when  he  felt  the 
need  of  relaxation  from  his  special  form  of  idleness, — 
he  would  disappear  for  an  indefinite  period  into  the 
wilds  of  Maine  with  gun  and  rod,  sending  back  from 
time  to  time  a  reassuring  box  of  game,  the  beauty  and 
variety  of  whose  "foliage"  was  a  source  of  endless 
wonder  to  little  Katherine. 

"It  's  not  foliage,"  Archie  declared,  the  day  after 
he  had  himself  acquired  this  item  of  information. 
"It  's  plumage." 

"I  like  foliage  better,"  Katherine  replied,  as  she 
gently  stroked  the  soft  breast  of  a  wild  duck.  "  It 
sounds  so  nice  and  woodsy." 

"  But  what  's  the  good  of  saying  what  is  n't  right? " 
insisted  Archie,  in  whom  a  very  recent  acquisition  in 
the  realm  of  knowledge  was  pretty  sure  to  induce  a 
didactic  spirit. 

"I  don't  see  how  we  can  tell  what  the  right  name 
of  it  is,"  the  little  girl  demurred,  in  a  tone  of  sin- 
cerest  speculation.  "How  do  we  know  what  the 
ducks  call  it?" 

There  was  something  so  pathetic  about  the  dead 
duck  and  the  way  its  head  tumbled  about  when  it 


62  Katherine  Day 

was  lifted  up  that  Katherine  felt  impelled  to  take 
this  rather  futile  stand  for  its  rights. 

"Don't  be  so  stubborn  and  stupid,  Katherine," 
said  Cousin  Elmira  sharply;  upon  which  the  children, 
knowing  that  they  were  there  only  on  sufferance, 
promptly  desisted  from  further  argument. 

Indeed,  until  they  had  begun  disputing  together, 
Elmira  had  scarcely  noticed  their  presence.  She  was 
preoccupied  with  the  hope  of  finding  a  line  in  Charles's 
hand,  such  as  the  head  of  his  house  was  unquestion- 
ably entitled  to.  The  last  time  he  was  away  on  a 
shooting  trip  a  little  note  to  her  had  come  tucked 
under  the  wing  of  the  largest  and  finest  specimen. 
But  to-day  there  was  no  such  pleasant  surprise  await- 
ing her,  and  the  thought  that  the  only  letter  which 
had  come  from  Charles  had  been  addressed  to  Kath- 
erine gathered  bitterness  in  her  mind. 

"Go  and  get  ready  for  supper,  Katherine,"  she 
commanded  curtly.  "Archie,  you  may  help  carry 
the  ducks  into  the  kitchen." 

"But  I  want  to  help,  too,"  Katherine  cried. 

They  were  all  three  crouching  on  the  floor  of  the 
big  china  closet  where  the  box  had  been  unpacked; 
it  seemed  as  if  discipline  might  relax  a  bit  in  this  un- 
accustomed environment.  But  no, — Cousin  Elmira 
was  firm. 

"Do  as  I  tell  you,  Katherine,"  she  insisted,  in  her 
cold,  autocratic  voice  against  which  there  was  no 
more  appeal  than  against  the  laws  of  nature;  and 
Katherine,  reluctantly  laying  down  the  pretty,  lop- 
headed  duck,  withdrew  with  slow  step  and  smoulder- 
ing indignation,  to  the  performance  of  an  uncongenial 
task. 

As  she  pulled  off  her  school  dress,  brushed  her 


A  Trial  of  Strength  63 

heavy  short  hair  straight  back,  and  pushed  in  the 
round-comb, — and  later  as  she  donned  the  Scotch- 
plaid  woollen  frock  for  which  she  had  so  ardently 
longed  and  which  had  been  spoiled  by  a  strong  pre- 
dominance of  the  detested  magenta,  she  was  won- 
dering vaguely  what  she  was  punished  for.  The 
general  sense  of  misdemeanor  which  rarely  left  her 
did  not  seem  quite  sufficient  to  account  for  this 
egregious  exhibition  of  partiality  on  Cousin  Elmira's 
part,  and  she  very  naturally  did  not  trace  it  to  that 
blissful  event  of  yesterday,  the  arrival  of  her  precious 
letter. 

It  was  a  sharp  autumn  day  about  two  months  after 
that  misadventure  in  the  pond  which  had  had  such 
an  unexpectedly  favorable  outcome  for  herself,  and 
as  she  buttoned  the  last  almost  inaccessible  button 
at  the  back  of  her  dress,  her  thoughts,  always  ready 
for  cheerful  diversion,  turned  with  a  pleasant  rebound 
to  her  father's  letter.  It  lay  on  the  bureau  before  her, 
on  its  way  from  the  pocket  of  one  dress  to  that  of  the 
other.  Picking  it  up,  she  laid  her  cheek  against  it, 
in  the  happy  liberty  of  loving  it  and  being  grateful 
for  it,  and  then,  in  the  gathering  twilight,  which  her 
young  eyes  took  no  note  of,  she  read  again  the  few 
lines  written  in  the  large  free  hand  which  seemed  to 
her  infinitely  more  beautiful  than  that  of  the  copy- 
books. When  she  came  to  the  postscript  it  was  with 
the  same  thrill  of  incredulous  delight  with  which  she 
had  read  it  so  many  times. 

Charles  Day  had  added,  as  a  careless,  good-natured 
after-thought:  "I  was  proud  of  my  plucky  little  girl 
the  other  evening," — and  the  plucky  little  girl  as  she 
read  it  would  scarcely  have  changed  places  with 
Archie  himself,  carrying  one  of  the  ducks  by  its 


64  Katharine  Day 

pretty  neck,  and  swinging  it  surreptitiously  around 
his  head,  in  the  rear  of  the  small  procession. 

The  evening  to  which  her  father  alluded  had  been 
one  of  mingled  triumph  and  compunction  in  Kath- 
erine's  experience.  The  two  children  had  got  into 
a  lively  discussion  after  supper  on  a  small  matter 
of  school  discipline,  Katherine  having  declared  that 
her  conduct  mark  would  have  been  "perfect"  the 
previous  week, — an  unprecedented  occurrence  in  her 
history, — had  she  not  spoken  to  Miss  Dole,  without 
permission, — the  very  last  hour,  too,  which  made  it 
particularly  trying.  Cousin  Elmira  was  not  there  to 
check  the  talk,  and  Mr.  Day  had  chanced  to  be  in  a 
mood  to  find  amusement  in  it. 

"What  made  you  do  it?"  Archie  queried,  with  the 
superior  tone  of  an  elder  brother  who  has  been  pro- 
moted to  "a  boys'  school. 

"Because  she  wouldn't  notice  when  I  held  up 
my  hand." 

"You  did  n't  hold  it  up  long  enough!" 

"Indeed  I  did!  I  held  it  up  as  much  as  half  an 
hour ! ' ' 

"You  couldn't  hold  it  up  half  an  hour,"  Archie 
declared,  warming  to  the  dispute. 

But  before  Katherine  could  answer,  their  father's 
voice  had  cut  across  the  discussion. 

"I  '11  make  you  an  offer,"  he  said.  "If  either  one 
of  you  will  hold  your  arm  out  straight  for  fifteen 
minutes  I  will  give  you  a  dollar!" 

The  children  sprang  eagerly  to  their  feet. 

"And  if  we  both  do?"  Katherine  inquired,  hardly 
able  to  credit  so  generous  a  proposal. 

"If  you  both  do  it,  you  shall  each  have  a  dol- 
lar!" 


A  Trial  of  Strength  65 

And  so  it  came  about  that  when,  a  few  minutes 
later,  Cousin  Elmira  joined  the  family,  she  beheld  the 
two  children  standing  side  by  side,  their  right 
arms  outstretched,  and  a  look  of  determination, 
graven  upon  each  youthful  countenance.  At  first 
she  imagined  it  to  be  a  new  form  of  punishment, 
which  would  have  implied  such  a  poaching  upon  her 
own  preserves  as  she  could  scarcely  have  approved. 
But  a  glance  at  her  cousin's  face,  as  he  sat,  watch 
in  hand,  regarding  the  children  with  an  expression 
of  benevolent  amusement  across  the  curling  spirals 
of  cigar  smoke,  convinced  her  that  the  mysterious 
function  was  not  of  a  punitive  nature. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  five  minutes,  Archie's  arm 
wavered  slightly.  "Is  the  time  'most  up,  Father?" 
he  asked. 

"Five  minutes  and  a  half,"  was  the  reply,  and  Mr 
Day's  eyes  returned  to  the  contemplation  of  Kather- 
ine's  face. 

She  stood  like  a  rock,  her  lips  pressed  firmly  to- 
gether, her  eyes  fixed  straight  before  her.  The  mo- 
ment had  been  apparent  when  a  realization  had 
come  upon  her  of  the  seriousness  of  her  undertaking, 
and  she  had  visibly  braced  herself  in  mind  and  body. 
She  wasted  no  strength  in  idle  inquiries  about  the 
time;  it  was  clear  that  all  her  forces  were  concen- 
trated upon  the  effort  to  come. 

The  seconds  dragged  their  slow  length. 

Presently:  "Isn't  the  time  'most  up?:'  Archie 
inquired,  in  an  uncertain,  querulous  voice. 

"Seven  minutes,"  was  the  disheartening  reply. 

The  boy's  arm  swayed  more  and  more,  and  sud- 
denly dropped  to  his  side. 

"Nobody  could  do  it,"  he  declared,  rather  sulkily; 


66  Katherine  Day 

"and  I  don't  see  the  good  of  hurting  yourself  like 
everything ! ' ' 

His  small  sister  meanwhile  had  not  moved  a  muscle. 

Now  Charles  Day  had  made  the  offer  somewhat 
thoughtlessly,  scarcely  realizing  to  what  an  ordeal 
he  might  be  subjecting  the  children,  should  it  tran- 
spire that  their  moral  stamina  was  equal  to  it.  He 
watched  Katherine  with  increasing  interest.  An  un- 
mistakable look  of  pain  was  gathering  about  her 
mouth,  and  her  eyes  seemed  growing  larger  and  more 
intense. 

"Ten  minutes,"  called  the  timekeeper  with  a  view 
to  encouraging  her. 

The  small  face  blanched ;  she  had  thought  the  time 
more  nearly  spent. 

The  child  was  really  suffering  severely,  more 
severely  than  her  father  was  aware.  But  over 
against  the  suffering  was  set  a  well-nigh  indomitable 
will.  It  was  not  the  dollar  she  was  covetous  of;  a 
dollar  was  an  enormous  sum,  but  no  dollar  that  ever 
was  coined  would  have  repaid  her  for  that  agony. 
It  was  not  even  her  father's  approval  that  she  was 
striving  for.  It  was  the  integrity  of  her  own  will 
which  she  would  not  yield;  a  will  which  had  had  but 
rare  opportunities  of  exercise,  a  will  which  was  fre- 
quently checked  by  insurmountable  obstacles.  Here 
was  something  that  was  entirely  within  her  own  con- 
trol; her  success  rested  with  her,  and  with  no  one 
else,  and  she  must  conquer.  She  did  not  come  to 
any  understanding  with  herself;  she  was  conscious 
only  of  a  hard,  unalterable  determination  that  was 
stronger  than  the  agony — for  agony  it  was — which 
it  involved. 

At    the   end  of  twelve   minutes   she   asked,    in    a 


A  Trial  of  Strength  67 

curiously  constrained  voice:  "May  I  walk  up  and 
down?" 

"Yes";  and  she  began  slowly  to  move  away  from 
her  place.  But  walking  brought  no  alleviation,  and 
she  came  suddenly  to  a  standstill  with  her  back  to 
the  others. 

It  was  a  relief  to  Charles  Day;  the  little  face  had 
become  distressing,  and  he  never  courted  distress. 

And  now  the  small  form  had  begun  to  sway 
slightly  and  the  arm  to  waver  as  Archie's  had  done; 
and  it  seemed  as  if  after  all  the  child  might  lose. 

Could  he  have  done  so  unobserved,  Charles  would 
have  set  his  watch  forward.  But  Archie  was  stand- 
ing beside  him,  counting  the  seconds,  and  Archie 
knew  the  exact  minute  at  which  they  had  begun. 

The  swaying  of  the  little  body  had  ceased,  obedient 
to  one  last  supreme  effort,  and  even  Elmira  paused 
in  her  tatting,  while  the  two  timekeepers  held  their 
breath.  Only  twenty  seconds  now, — only  ten, — 
only — 

"Time!"  and  the  little  arm  dropped  like  a  billet 
of  lead,  while  the  little  figure,  as  if  yielding  to  that 
weight,  sank  to  a  sitting  posture  on  the  floor. 

"I  am  so  glad,"  Katherine  sighed,  rather  tremu- 
lously. 

Then  her  father  came  and  picked  her  up  and  led 
her  to  his  own  big  chair,  and,  taking  her  on  his  knee, 
he  rubbed  the  ice-cold  arm;  while  Archie  said,  in  a 
half-hearted  way:  "I  s'pose  I  could  have  done  it  too 
if  I  'd  thought  it  would  pay," — and  Cousin  Elmira 
said  nothing. 

And  gradually  the  color  came  back  into  Kather- 
ine's  face,  and  her  eyes  grew  natural  again,  and  she 
became  aware  that  her  father's  arm  was  around 


68  Katharine  Day 

her  waist, — a  state  of  things  which  was  so  highly 
satisfactory  that  she  did  not  move  until  presently  the 
arm  was  withdrawn,  and  she  found  herself  released. 

"There  's  your  dollar,"  Charles  Day  had  said; 
"and  I  swear  you  've  earned  it!" 

"Must  I  put  it  in  the  savings-bank?"  Katherine 
asked,  with  an  anxious  look  toward  Elmira. 

"  Not  until  the  bank  has  held  out  its  arm  for  fifteen 
minutes,"  was  the  reassuring  answer. 

She  had  taken  the  two  fifty-cent  pieces  of  scrip, — 
the  nearest  approach  to  money  which  the  great  war 
had  left  them, — and  had  put  them  away,  for  mature 
consideration.  It  was  not  the  sort  of  sum  to  be 
lightly  spent.  It  must  be  dedicated  to  important 
ends,,  and  Katherine  became  quite  solemn  when  she 
thought  of  it. 

Yet  underlying  all  her  meditations  was  a  gnawing 
compunction  about  Archie  and  his  failure  to  achieve 
a  like  sum;  and  the  word  of  commendation  in  that 
delightful  postscript  had  renewed  her  uneasiness. 

As  she  stood  in  her  completed  toilet  reading  once 
again  those  delectable  words,  a  wave  of  magnanimity 
went  over  her,  and  her  spirit  rose  to  the  inspiring 
thought  that  she  could  share  her  riches  with  Archie. 
The  money  was  not  the  important  thing  to  be  sure; 
it  was  not  that  "best"  for  which  she  had  expressed 
so  warm  a  preference  in  the  matter  of  princes ;  but 
something  whispered  to  her  that  Archie  might  not  be 
of  her  way  of  thinking  on  this  point. 

She  opened  her  bureau  drawer  and  the  little  shell 
box  in  which  she  kept  her  valuables,  and  possessing 
herself  of  one  of  the  two  pieces  of  currency, — a  crisp, 
miniature  greenback, — and  laying  it  inside  the  letter, 
she  slipped  down  the  brightly  lighted  stairway. 


A  Trial  of  Strength  69 

The  gas  was  not  burning  in  the  sitting-room,  where 
she  found  Archie,  gravely  standing  on  his  head  in  the 
dark,  with  a  view  to  passing  the  time  agreeably  until 
the  supper  bell  should  ring.  As  the  sight  of  his  small 
sister,  appearing  in  the  bright  doorway,  presented 
itself  to  his  inverted  vision,  he  waved  his  legs  in 
greeting  and  then  gracefully  resumed  his  normal 
relation  with  the  universe. 

A  rush  of  blood  to  the  head  is  said  to  clarify  the 
brain;  in  this  case  it  would  seem  to  have  had  a 
salutary  effect  upon  Archie's  judgment  at  least,  for 
he  remarked  with  great  friendliness,  and  without 
preamble:  "I  say,  Kitkat,  I  think  Cousin  Elmira  is 
pretty  nasty  to  -you ! ' ' 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind,"  Katherine  replied,  buoyed  up 
by  a  general  sense  of  friendly  sympathy;  feeling, 
besides,  too  rich  and  generous  in  view  of  her  medi- 
tated action  to  "bother  about  Cousin  Elmira."  And 
she  added,  with  a  quaint  old-womanish  manner 
which  concealed  a  very  deep  feeling:  "So  long  as 
you  and  father  are  my  friends,  Cousin  Elmira  is  n't 
much  matter." 

"  I  should  think  she  was  more  matter  than  anybody 
as  long  as  you  have  to  mind  her,"  Archie  declared. 

"No,"  said  Katherine,  wrestling  with  a  weighty 
thought.  "It  's  only  my  body  that  she  orders  'round ; 
't  is  n't  really  me." 

The  children  had  curled  themselves  up  at  the  two 
ends  of  the  big  sofa  which  stood  in  a  shadowy  corner 
of  the  room  where  the  light  from  the  stairway  did 
not  reach  them. 

Presently:  "I  've  got  something  for  you,"  Kath- 
erine remarked,  under  cover  of  the  darkness. 

"Let  's  see  what  it  is,"  Archie  demanded; — upon 


70  Katharine  Day 

which  Katherine  reached  across  the  intervening  space 
and  tucked  the  piece  of  scrip  into  his  hand. 

"Hullo!"  cried  the  boy.     "What's  this?" 

"It  's  half  of  that  dollar." 

"Oh,  I  say!"  Archie  protested. 

"You've  got  to  take  it,"  Katherine  declared, 
speaking  very  rapidly,  "'cause  I  don't  know  what 
to  do  with  such  a  lot,  and  you  ought  to  have  half, 
anyway,  and  I  never  should  do  anything  with  a  whole 
dollar,  but  we  can  have  lots  of  fun  with  fifty  cents, 
Winny  and  me,  and  you  gave  me  half  of  your  apple 
one  day,  and — 

"Any  more  reasons?"  Archie  inquired,  trying  to 
summon  resolution  to  reject  this  munificent  gift. 

"Lots  of  reasons, — and  besides,  it  makes  me  feel 
better  inside.  'Cause  you  know,  Archie,  it  is  n't  any 
fun  to  have  things  when  someone  you  care  about 
hasn't  got  'em  too;  now,  is  it?" 

And  Archie,  not  seeing  his  way  clear  to  a  declara- 
tion of  indifference  towards  such  creditable  con- 
siderations, stuffed  the  bit  of  currency  into  his 
pocket  just  as  Cousin  Elmira's  form  appeared  in  the 
doorway. 

Unconscious  of  the  children's  presence,  she  came 
forward  and  lighted  the  gas  in  the  drop-light,  in  the 
porcelain  shade  of  which  were  depicted  various  scenes 
of  a  sentimental  and  romantic  nature; — shepherds 
and  bandits,  flower-girls  and  courtiers,  willingly  lend- 
ing themselves  to  the  passage  of  the  light.  As  Elmira 
raised  her  eyes,  she  glanced  toward  the  sofa  and  dis- 
covered the  two  children,  suspiciously  quiet  in  their 
respective  corners. 

"What  are  you  doing  there  in  the  dark?"  she 
asked  sharply. 


A  Trial  of  Strength  71 

"Waiting  for  supper,"  was  Archie's  prompt  re- 
joinder. 

His  little  sister  said  nothing;  but  there  was  a  look 
in  her  face  as  if  she  knew  a  happy  secret,  and  some- 
how Cousin  Elmira,  whose  perceptions  were  very 
keen,  was  conscious  of  an  uneasy  feeling  that  Kath- 
erine  was  developing  resources  which  were  beyond 
the  control  of  her  own  vigilance. 


CHAPTER  VI 

HIGH    TEA 

"  She  liked  whate'er 
She  looked  on,  and  her  looks  went  everywhere." 

ONE  snowy  December  evening,  when  Katherine 
was  eleven  years  old,  there  was  high  tea  at 
Charles  Day's,  and  great  was  the  rejoicing  of  the 
children.  The  guests,  six  in  number,  had  arrived 
quite  powdered  with  snow,  and  there  had  been  the 
preliminary  and  unlooked-for  fun  of  brushing  them 
off  as  they  stood,  stamping  and  blowing,  on  the  front 
piazza. 

It  was  a  strictly  family  party,  but  Katherine  was 
not  sophisticated  enough  to  cavil  at  that  circum- 
stance. She  was  still  of  the  opinion  that  no  expe- 
rience in  life  could  be  more  delightful  than  that  of 
seeing  Grandmother  Day  and  Aunt  Fanny,  Uncle 
Theodore  and  Aunt  Anne,  gathered  about Jtier  father's 
board, — unless,  indeed,  the  honors  of  this  particular 
occasion  might  be  disputed  by  Aunt  Sarah  McLean 
and  her  stepson  Tom,  who  had  come  all  the  way  from 
New  York  State  to  spend  the  Christmas  holidays. 
The  mere  expression,  "Christmas  holidays,"  had  in 
itself  an  exotic  flavor  most  pleasing  to  the  ear,  for 
the  school  vacation  at  Camwood  fell  at  the  Thanks- 
giving season,  and  so  strong  was  the  Puritan  tradition 


High  Tea  73 

still,  that  it  was  much  as  ever  that  Christmas  itself 
had  been  rescued  as  a  holiday. 

Nor  were  there  lacking  other  highly   interesting 
features  in  the  McLean  equipment  for  the  role  of  dis- 
tinguished strangers.     For  Tom's  father,  who  was  a 
minister,  had  recently  been  alluded  to  in  Katherine's 
hearing  as  "  a  pioneer  of  the  liberal  religion  in  central 
New  York,"  and  upon  consulting  the  dictionary  she 
had  learned  that  a  pioneer  is  "a  person  whose  busi- 
ness it  is  to  clear  a  road  before  an  army,  to  sink 
mines,  and  throw  up  works  and  fortifications."    This 
idea  of  a  militant  parson,  so  totally  different  from 
the   Rev.  Mr.  Wilder, — to  whom,  by  the  way,   she 
owed  her  picturesque  impression  of  his  gifted  col- 
league,— had   appealed   strongly  to   the   little   girl's 
imagination,  and  if  her  mind  harbored  a  regret  to- 
night, it  was  that  the  occasion  was  not  graced  by 
the  presence  of  so  interesting  a  member  of  the  fam- 
ily.    She  would  have  been  glad  to  make  a  study  of 
his  heroic  mould,  the  significance  of  which  had  on 
previous  occasions  escaped  her.     She  reflected,  how- 
ever, that  a  man  engaged  in  such  important  work 
was  hardly  likely  to  indulge  in  holiday  outings,  and, 
in  his  absence,  she  contented  herself  with  a  critical 
examination  of  his  son's  physiognomy. 

Tom  wa,s  a  homely.wide-awake  boy  of  fifteen, whose 
rather  rough  manners  were  tempered  only  by  a  very 
outspoken  devotion  to  his  stepmother.  It  seemed 
to  Katherine,  as  she  studied  his  energetic  and  com- 
bative countenance  across  the  table,  that  he  must 
be  a  great  help  to  his  father  in  the  arduous  labors 
of  pioneer  work,  and  she  proposed,  at  some  more 
favorable  opportunity,  to  draw  her  cousin  out  on 
the  subject. 


74  Katherine  Day 

Meanwhile  here  they  all  were,  in  the  full  delights 
of  a  tea-party,  and  Katherine  soon  desisted  from 
speculations  touching  the  strenuous  theologian,  who 
would  perhaps  have  failed  to  recognize  himself  as  he 
stood  revealed  to  the  active  imagination  of  his  little 
niece.  He  might  even  have  felt  more  in  his  element 
had  it  been  permitted  him  to  crack  a  joke  with  one 
or  another  of  the  goodly  company  partaking  of  de- 
licious viands  off  the  beautiful  decorated  china  which 
had  been  a  wedding  gift  to  the  children's  mother. 

Katherine  was  of  a  pre-eminently  hospitable  dis- 
position. Indeed,  if  she  could  have  had  her  way,  she 
would  gladly  have  arranged  one  or  another  agree- 
able social  function  for  every  day  of  the  week;  and 
the  infrequency  of  such  indulgences  did  but  ren- 
der them  the  more  delectable.  As  she  sat,  to-night, 
in  her  very  prettiest  dress, — a  brown,  softly  shim- 
mering Irish  poplin, — listening  to  the  talk  of  the 
seniors,  and  restraining  with  the  greatest  difficulty 
her  own  eager  little  tongue,  her  small  mind  was 
stimulated  to  the  liveliest  participation  in  each  phase 
of  this  truly  brilliant  occasion.  There  was  no  lack 
of  cheerful  converse,  for  the  Days  were  all  good  talk- 
ers,— Charles,  especially,  being  almost  as  responsive 
as  his  little  daughter  to  anything  in  the  way  of  a 
social  stimulus.  He  regaled  the  company  with  many 
wonderful  tales  which  Uncle  Theodore,  to  the  un- 
disguised pride  of  his  pretty  wife,  promptly  capped; 
while  Grandmother  Day  and  Aunt  Sarah,  if  less  con- 
spicuously gifted  in  anecdote,  were  not  behind  the 
others  in  the  pith  and  point  of  their  comment. 

The  special  wonder  of  the  children,  however,  was 
Tom,  who,  in  the  full  consciousness  of  advancing 
years,  contributed  certain  items  with  regard  to  the 


High  Tea  75 

great  Erie  Canal,  its  locks  and  sluices,  which  proved 
almost  as  novel  and  interesting  to  his  elders  as  to 
his  small  cousins.  It  was,  to  be  sure,  not  precisely 
Tom's  conversational  ability  which  impressed  our  lit- 
tle girl — that,  indeed,  was  a  gift  which  she  herself 
was  conscious  of  possessing  in  no  mean  degree, — but 
rather  his  temerity  in  thus  monopolizing  the  atten- 
tion of  the  grown  people;  which,  on  the  part  of  a 
boy  who  still  wore  jackets  and  was  subject  to  school- 
masters, showed  a  phenomenal  degree  of  self-con- 
fidence. Yet,  despite  the  triumph  which  the  big 
cousin  had  scored  at  the  tea  table,  he  nevertheless 
condescended  to  rank  himself  with  the  children;  and, 
after  supper,  he  expressed  a  flattering  readiness  for 
a  game  of  dominoes. 

"The  Delphi  boys  call  it  'bid',"  Tom  remarked,  as 
the  innocent  bits  of  black  and  white  ivory  were  taken 
from  their  box  and  spread  out  on  the  table.  "They 
play  it  just  like  poker." 

"Like  a  poker!"  Katherine  repeated,  while  her 
mind  wandered  to  the  fire-irons.  "  How  can  domi- 
noes be  like  a  poker?" 

"Oh,  poker  is  a  gambling  game,"  Archie  hastened 
to  explain,  lest  he  should  be  thought  as  uninstructed 
in  manly  things  as  his  small  sister. 

"But  is  n't  it  wicked  to  gamble?"  the  little  girl 
inquired,  anxiously,  while  she  wondered  whether  it 
was  possible  that  a  boy  whose  father  was  pioneer  of 
the  liberal  religion  could  be  guilty  of  secret  crimes. 

"Rather,  I  believe,"  Tom  admitted.    "And  besides, 

it  is  n't  any  fun!     You  see,  you  either  lose  your  own 

money  or  else  you  get  what  belongs  to  some  other 

fellow,  and  one  is  about  as  Bad  as  the  other!" 

"You    never  did  such  a  thing;    did  you,  Tom?" 


76  Katharine  Day 

Katharine  protested  eagerly, — while  Archie  secretly 
hoped  that  his  cousin  might  be  betrayed  into  the 
confession  of  dark  and  nefarious  practices. 

"I  did,  once,"  Tom  answered,  carelessly, — "and  I 
felt  like  a  thief!" 

"Then  you  won!"  Archie  exclaimed,  much  and 
agreeably  wrought  upon  by  the  admission. 

"Yes, — and  quite  a  lot,  too!" 

"I  should  n't  think  you  would  have  known  what 
to  do  with  the  money,"  said  Katherine,  much  con- 
cerned. 

"Oh,  I  just  sneaked  it  into  the  contribution  box! 
Draw,  Archie!" 

But  Katherine  was  so  preoccupied  that  she  let 
herself  be  badly  beaten. 

What  a  dreadful  thing,  she  was  saying  to  herself, 
to  play  a  game  which  made  you  feel  like  a  thief! — 
for,  of  course,  it  would  be  worse  to  win  than  to  lose. 
Yet,  how  heartrending  the  latter  alternative  might 
be,  she  could  the  better  imagine,  because  she  was 
herself  acquainted  with  the  delights  and  dignities 
attaching  to  an  independent  competence. 

For  the  last  two  months  Katherine  had  been  in 
the  enjoyment  of  a  regular  income  of  no  less  than 
ten  cents  a  week,  and  if  this  incredible  piece  of  good 
fortune  was  in  the  nature  of  a  bribe,  contingent  in 
fact  upon  her  going  promptly  and  voluntarily  to 
bed  at  eight  o'clock  every  evening,  it  was  none  the 
less  welcome  for  that. 

Katherine,  indeed,  had  long  been  in  urgent  need 
of  some  more  regular  source  of  supply  than  the  five- 
and  ten-cent  bits  of  scrip  which  her  father  bestowed 
upon  her  when  he  happened  to  think  of  it, — which 
is  to  say,  at  intervals  so  extremely  uncertain,  and 


High  Tea  77 

often  so  painfully  prolonged,  that  she  was  reminded 
of  the  fat  kine  and  the  lean  kine  in  the  history  of 
Joseph.  For  a  child  of  liberal  ideas,  in  daily  inter- 
course, moreover,  with  a  young  person  so  sumptuously 
provided  as  Winny  Gerald,  her  recurrent  periods  of 
absolute  pauperism  had  been  peculiarly  trying;  and 
she  had  eagerly  grasped  at  the  promise  of  a  fixed  in- 
come, however  modest.  To  be  always  in  a  position 
to  contribute  something,  if  only  an  ounce  of  choco- 
late creams,  toward  their  Saturday  afternoon  orgies; 
to  look  forward  with  some  degree  of  confidence  to  the 
periodical  visits  of  the  organ-man  and  the  poign- 
antly human  solicitations  of  one  particular  monkey 
in  a  red  cap  which  it  almost  broke  her  heart  to  send 
away  empty-handed,  was  certainly  worth  a  sacrifice; 
and  the  sacrifice  had  been  cheerfully  and  persistently 
made.  Yes,  she  reflected,  it  must  be  a  grievous  thing 
to  lose  one's  good  money,  but  oh,  how  much  worse 
to  be  the  means  of  another  person's  losing  his! 

The  game  was  over.  Tom  was  "domino,"  and 
Katherine  was  just  rousing  to  the  fact  that  a  disgrace- 
fully broad  spread  of  unrelated  and  undesirable  pieces 
had  collected  under  her  hands.  Looking  across  the 
little  inlaid  card  table  at  Tom,  serenely  conscious  of 
victory,  she  imagined  how  shocking  it  would  have 
been  if  this  victory  had  involved  the  impoverishment 
of  herself  and  Archie  and : — 

"Oh,  Tom!"  she  cried,  anxiously  ;  "you  never 
gambled  but  once ;  did  you  ? ' ' 

"You  bet  I  never  did!"  was  the  reassuring  answer. 
"And  now  what  do  you  say  to  'dumb  crambo'  ?" 

What  did  they  say,  indeed?  What  would  any  well- 
conditioned  child  say  to  so  ecstatic  a  suggestion !  For 
"dumb  crambo"  was  another  and  most  rapturous 


78  Katharine  Day 

exotic,  the  description  of  which  had  already  fired  the 
imagination  of  the  children. 

Accordingly,  Archie  and  Katherine  were  soon  dash- 
ing about  the  house  in  search  of  stage  properties,  for 
the  effective  employment  of  which  both  were  conscious 
of  peculiar  aptitudes;  and  highly  elated  they  were 
because  the  grown  people  had  condescendingly  agreed 
to  play  the  indispensable  part  of  spectators.  A 
word  was  given  out,  Tom,  as  stage-manager,  had  as- 
signed the  roles,  and  in  an  incredibly  short  time  the 
game  was  in  full  swing. 

It  opened  with  the  word  "rake,"  in  illustration  of 
which  it  was  permitted  Katherine  to  enact  the  part 
of  the  immortal  Maud  Muller  raking  her  traditional 
meadows,  while  Tom,  mounted  upon  a  fiery  saw- 
horse,  came  prancing  up  in  his  character  of  Judge; 
poor  Archie  being  relegated  to  the  unimportant  role  of 
a  casual  haymaker  not  mentioned  in  the  text, — a  r61e, 
however,  which  he  entered  into  with  a  spirit  and  grace 
that  made  the  Judge  seem  appropriately  ponderous 
in  comparison. 

Suddenly  the  deep  voice  of  the  hall  clock  striking 
eight  boomed  its  warning,  and  Katherine 's  heart  sank. 
She  paused,  tin  dipper  in  hand.  Could  she  stop 
short  off  at  this  happy  moment,  when  the  Judge 
pranced  expectant,  and  the  aunts  said  how  well  she 
acted  ?  Yet — could  she  break  the  record  she  was  so 
proud  of?  Could  she  come  empty-handed  to  the  next 
banquet  with  Winny? 

The  struggle  lasted  through  the  first  six  strokes  of 
the  clock ;  with  the  seventh  our  little  girl  resumed  her 
natural  character. 

"It  's  eight  o'clock,  and  I  s'pose  I  've  got  to  go  to 
bed,"  she  declared,  with  a  quite  abnormal  stoicism, 


High  Tea  79 

Then,  to  their  credit  be  it  said,  the  whole  audience 
rose  as  one  man  in  protest  against  such  an  enormity; 
and  when  Grandmother  Day,  herself  as  strict  a  disci- 
plinarian as  any,  made  special  interest  with  Cousin 
Elmira  in  Katherine's  behalf,  the  former  could  but 
give  her  consent. 

And  so  it  came  about  that  the  Judge  got  his 
drink,  after  all,  and  the  immortal  Maud  had  the 
joy  of  becoming  Martha  Washington,  Lady  Macbeth, 
Jenny  Lind  and  our  first  Mother  Eve  in  delightful 
succession. 

It  was  an  evening  never  to  be  forgotten.  Grand- 
mother Day  declared  herself  surprised  that  those  two 
children  could  act  so  well, — for  Archie,  too,  in  spite 
of  Tom's  propensity  to  monopolize  the  leading  male 
parts,  had  achieved  a  marked  success  in  such  rdles  as 
were  vouchsafed  him, — the  aunts  expressed  them- 
selves not  less  enthusiastically  about  the  entertain- 
ment provided,  while  Uncle  Theodore  remarked  in 
Katherine's  hearing: — "That  's  a  bright  girl  of  yours, 
Charles!" 

Best  of  all,  Tom  McLean,  the  big,  self-confident 
cousin,  had  declared:  "You  act  lots  better  than  the 
girls  at  home,  Katherine!  I  wish  you  lived  in  Del- 
phi!" at  which  Katherine  felt  almost  ready  to  turn  her 
back  upon  her  own  little  world  and  go  and  prove  her 
superiority  to  the  Delphi  girls. 

This,  however,  was  but  a  temporary  aberration, 
and  when  Saturday  came  she  found  herself  eager  as 
ever  for  the  weekly  tea-party  in  Winny's  attic  to 
which  Rosemary  gold,  Katherine's  favorite  doll,  had 
been  particularly  invited,  and  in  connection  with 
which  the  probability  of  a  large  appetite  on  the  part 
of  the  doll  had  decided  Katherine  on  the  unusual 


8o  Katharine  Day 

extravagance  of  adding  several  sticks  of  taffy  to  her 
ounce  of  chocolate  creams. 

What,  then,  was  her  consternation,  when,  on  Sat- 
urday, her  well-earned  stipend  was  not  forthcoming, — 
when  she  found  herself  rudely  condemned  to  unmer- 
ited insolvency! 

Yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  Katherine  was  more 
taken  at  unawares  than  Elmira  herself  by  the  curt 
refusal  which  met  her  legitimate  demand,  and  which 
had  its  rise  in  one  of  those  unpremeditated  movements 
of  tyranny  into  which  an  unloving  autocrat  may  on 
occasion  be  betrayed. 

It  chanced  that  on  that  blissful  evening  of  the  tea- 
party  little  Katherine  had  made  complete  conquest 
of  her  Uncle  Theodore,  a  kindly  man,  of  quick  per- 
ceptions and  an  enthusiastic  temperament, — thanks 
to  which  happy  combination  he  was,  by  the  way, 
winning  early  distinction  as  a  jury  lawyer.  On  this 
occasion  his  interest  had  been  warmly  enlisted  by 
the  little  girl's  vivacious  and  usually  felicitous  ren- 
dering of  many  and  variously  taxing  roles ;  in  so  much 
that,  not  content  with  the  word  of  commendation 
which  had  reached  Katherine 's  ears,  he  returned  to 
the  subject  later  in  the  evening  when  the  ladies, 
with  Elmira  in  attendance,  had  gone  up-stairs  to 
don  their  heavy  wraps. 

The  two  men  were  standing  in  the  hall  waiting  for 
the  others  to  come  down,  and  Katherine  could  be 
heard  in  the  parlor,  laughing  delightedly  over  some 
prank  of  the  boys. 

"  I  've  quite  lost  my  heart  to  your  little  Katherine," 
Theodore  had  said,  as  Charles  helped  him  on  with  his 
overcoat.  "  I  don't  know  when  I  Ve  seen  so  bright  a 
child." 


High  Tea  81 

"Yes,"  his  brother-in-law  returned, — "she  's  a 
bright  little  thing,  and,"  —with  a  reversion  to  the 
past  such  as  he  rarely  confessed  to — "  I  believe  she  's 
growing  like  her  mother.  She  's  built  on  a  larger 
scale  of  course,  and  she  's  more  Day  than  Stafford; 
but, — she  certainly  did  have  a  look  of  her  mother  this 
evening.  However,  you  would  hardly  remember 
Lucy; — that  was  pretty  well  before  your  time." 

"I  remember  her  perfectly,"  Theodore  declared, 
"although  I  never  saw  her  but  once.  She  was  not  a 
woman  to  forget,"  he  added,  feelingly,  while  a  vision 
of  the  slight,  ardent  young  creature  with  the  wild  bird 
eyes  and  the  spirit  face  crossed  his  mind. 

And  Elmira,  pausing  on  the  upper  landing  to  adjust 
Grandmother  Day's  bonnet,  heard  the  little  colloquy; 
whereupon  her  soul  grew  bitter  within  her. 

Very  bitter  it  was  still  when  on  Saturday  morning 
Lucy's  child  appeared  before  her,  and,  with  the  ardent 
eyes  and  impetuous  demeanor  wherein  that  fleeting 
likeness  was  chiefly  apparent,  claimed  her  just  dues. 

And  because  she  would  never  have  believed  herself 
capable  of  a  vengeful  act,  Elmira,  taken  off  her  guard, 
was  shocked  at  the  sound  of  her  own  voice,  declaring: 
"You  will  have  no  ten  cents  this  week,  Katherine! 
You  did  not  go  to  bed  at  eight  o'clock  on  Thursday 
evening." 

The  occasion  was  trivial  enough  in  itself,  but  to 
Elmira 's  mind  no  less  than  Katherine 's  it  loomed 
large. 

"  But,  Cousin  Elmira,  you  said  I  might  sit  up!"  the 
little  girl  gasped,  hardly  able  to  credit  her  senses. 

And  Elmira,  though  already  she  would  have  given 
much  to  retract,  only  answered,  coldly:  "That  does 
not  alter  the  case." 


82  Katherine  Day 

Then  Katherine  fell  into  a  passion  of  rage  and  re- 
sentment that  broke  all  bounds.  It  was  not  the  loss 
of  the  money — little  did  she  care  for  that !  It  was  the 
flagrant,  and  quite  unprecedented  injustice  that  was 
driving  the  child  to  extremity.  Her  cheeks  flamed 
and  her  eyes  blazed,  while  her  heart  beat  so  hard  that 
she  felt  half  suffocated,  and  her  voice  was  high  and 
strident  as  she  cried, — with  an  opportune,  if  hardly 
justifiable  application  of  the  text  of  a  recent  sermon : — 

"  You  're  as  mean,  as  mean  as  a  whited  sepulchre! — 
and  I  hate  you!" 

Elmira  Faxon  turned  a  shade  paler  than  usual. 
There  was  something  really  appalling  in  this  sudden 
outburst  of  hatred  from  the  little  victim  whose  fate 
had  been  a3  clay  in  her  hands.  She  had  often  de- 
plored Katherine 's  temper,  but  she  had  little  guessed 
its  force.  Yet  to  own  herself  in  the  wrong,  she  rea- 
soned, would  be  an  abdication  of  authority  as  inju- 
rious to  the  child  as  to  herself;  and  it  was  not  without 
a  certain  sense,  as  of  dignity  creditably  maintained, 
that  she  said: 

"You  will  go  to  your  room,  Katherine,  and  stay 
there  until  you  have  changed  your  opinion!" 

Katherine  needed  no  second  bidding.  For  the  first 
time  in  her  life  that  place  of  punishment  presented 
itself  as  a  refuge.  She  craved  solitude;  she  felt  that 
she  never,  never  wanted  to  see  another  human  crea- 
ture as  long  as  she  lived. 

Yet  a  human  creature,  and  a  highly  appreciative 
one,  confronted  her  on  the  threshold  as  she  turned  to 
leave  the  room,  for  there  stood  no  less  a  personage 
than  Tom  McLean,  transfixed  in  an  attitude  of  de- 
lighted attention. 

The  boy  had  come  with   a  note   from  his  grand- 


High  Tea  83 

motner,  and  had  arrived  just  in  time  to  hear  his  little 
cousin's  reprehensible  opinion  touching  the  mortuary 
character  of  Elmira's  moral  complexion.  He  did  not 
in  the  least  understand  the  situation ;— indeed,  he 
thought  it  more  than  likely  that  Katherine  was  in  the 
wrong.  But  he  liked  her  spirit;  and  as  the  child 
passed  him,  with  crimson  face  and  flaming  eyes,  he 
seized  her  hand,  declaring  in  a  stage  aside,  "Bully 
for  you,  Katherine !  You  're  good  as  a  boy ! ' ' 

He  had  lowered  his  voice  for  form's  sake  only,  and 
he  knew  that  his  words  were  quite  audible  to  Cousin 
Elmira;  and  when  she  gave  no  sign  he  also  knew  that 
she  had  been  in  the  wrong. 

"Wait  a  minute,  Katherine,"  he  called,  boldly,  as 
his  little  cousin  reached  the  foot  of  the  stairs:  "  Here  's 
a  note  from  grandmother  to  ask  you  and  Archie  to 
come  to  dinner  and  go  with  us  to  see  Tom  Thumb. 
Archie  's  up  at  the  house  already.  Cousin  Elmira  will 
let  you  come,  of  course,  and  I  '11  wait  for  you." 

He  was  looking,  with  cool  defiance,  at  Katherine 's 
redoubtable  adversary ;  yet  when  Elmira,  glancing  up 
from  the  perusal  of  the  note,  quietly  directed  the  child 
to  wear  her  Irish  poplin,  he  perceived  that  she  was 
yielding,  not  to  his  boyish  impertinence,  but  to  her 
own  conscience. 

And  Katherine,  unperplexed  by  the  moral  subtle- 
ties of  the  situation,  flew  to  her  room  joyfully  aware 
that  the  face  of  the  world  had  changed,  and  that 
somehow  Tom  had  done  it. 

Nevertheless,  when  half  an  hour  later  they  were 
walking  briskly  up  the  street  together,  having  first 
called  at  Winny's  door  to  make  Rosemary  gold's 
excuses,  the  little  girl  had  not  the  heart  to  betray  the 
enormity  of  the  provocation  under  which  she  had 


84  Katharine  Day 

spoken  those  terrific  words.  She  was  already  ashamed 
of  her  own  temper,  and  she  had  no  wish  to  blight 
her  enemy's  reputation  forever. 

So  that  when  Tom  remarked,  with  a  certain  big 
boy  patronage  :  "I  know  she  'd  been  horrid  to  you, 
Katherine,  but — what  had  she  done?"  the  child 
answered,  with  a  degree  of  reticence  that  was  hardly  to 
have  been  looked  for  in  so  impetuous  a  little  spitfire : 

"Oh,  don't  let  's  talk  about  it,  Tom!  It  's  over 
and  done  with  now ! ' ' 

Upon  which  Tom  made  mental  note  of  Katherine  as 
a  girl  who  was  "game"  every  time. 


CHAPTER  VII 

ALMOST  A  QUARREL 
"  Wall  upon  wall  are  between  us." 

IF  one  has  been  tempted  to  linger  unduly  over 
Katherine  Day's  childish  experiences,  it  is  less 
because  of  any  exceptional  importance  attaching  to 
them  than  because  the  memory  of  them  always 
formed  so  essential  a  part  of  her  consciousness.  She 
never  lost  her  sense  of  identity  with  that  little  girl  of 
long  ago  whose  adorations  and  dislikes,  whose  mis- 
demeanors and  aspirations,  were  of  such  dramatic 
vigor.  Insomuch  that  when,  in  after-years,  she 
chanced  upon  some  old  daguerreotype  of  herself  in 
round-comb  and  high-necked,  short-sleeved  frock,  it 
all  seemed  so  natural  that  a  subsequent  reminder 
of  the  changes  time  had  wrought  in  her  outer  aspect 
came  quite  as  a  surprise  to  her. 

Happily  for  her,  it  was  the  gentler  influences  which 
left  the  more  lasting  impression,  perhaps  because 
they  were  more  rare.  And  if  she  always  cherished 
a  grateful  memory  of  the  farmer's  wife  who  had 
befriended  her  in  disgrace,  how  much  more  vivid 
and  enduring  was  her  recollection  of  her  father's 
casual  kindnesses!  She  was  but  ten  years  old  on 
that  memorable  day  when  he  had  carried  her  damp 
little  form  up-stairs  and  called  her  his  prize  fish,  but 


86  Katherine  Day 

there  never  came  a  time  when  she  could  not  see 
the  half-humorous,  half-pitiful  expression  of  his  face, 
nor  hear  the  delightful  tone  of  his  voice  as  he  spoke 
the  words.  By  the  time  Katherine's  hair  hung  in 
braids  down  her  back,  and  her  dresses  came  to  her 
ankles,  this  father  and  daughter,  the  one  so  care- 
lessly affectionate,  the  other  so  passionately  devoted, 
had  become  fast  friends. 

Katherine  was  now  close  upon  fourteen  years  of 
age,  a  healthy,  growing  girl,  with  something  of  the 
awkwardness  but  not  quite  the  degree  of  self-con- 
sciousness which  so  often  embarrasses  and  distracts 
the  early  teens.  She  was,  of  course,  intensely  inter- 
ested in  herself, — who  is  not? — but  she  was  also 
deeply  interested  in  a  large  number  of  her  fellow 
creatures;  to  say  nothing  of  the  imperative  claims 
upon  her  attention  of  the  books  she  read,  the  con- 
versations she  heard,  the  sights  she  saw. 

In  spite  of  certain  deprivations  and  limitations  to 
which  she  had  always  been  subject,  in  spite,  too,  of  an 
impetuosity  of  temperament,  a  carelessness  of  con- 
sequences, which  often  got  her  into  trouble,  she  was 
at  bottom  a  singularly  happy  girl.  And  the  very 
pith  and  kernel  of  her  happiness  consisted  in  that  same 
good  comradeship  of  which  mention  has  been  made. 
Let  Cousin  Elmira  be  as  sarcastic  as  she  would,  let 
all  Katherine's  horizon  be  clouded  with  her  own  mis- 
doings, the  voice  of  her  father,  returning  from  town, 
and  his  almost  invariable  inquiry:  "Where  's  Kath- 
erine?" set  all  her  jangling  sensibilities  in  tune  as 
promptly  as  it  brought  her  feet  flying  down  the 
stairs. 

That  she  did  not  watch  for  his  return  as  the  tradi- 
tional wife  or  daughter  does,  was  due  to  the  fact  that 


Almost  a  Quarrel  87 

the  hour  of  Charles  Day's  homecoming  was  as  incal- 
culable as  the  vagaries  of  an  April  sky.  Morning, 
afternoon,  or  evening  might  bring  him  to  his  door,  or 
neither  noon  nor  night  might  know  his  face  for  days 
at  a  time.  If  those  old  rivals,  the  wild  ducks,  had 
long  since  taken  their  wedge-shaped  way  to  southern 
shores,  a  New  York  opera  season  would  make  ter- 
rible ravages  in  Katherine's  content;  or  in  midsum- 
mer, when  the  voice  of  neither  duck^nor  prima  donna 
is  heard  in  the  land,  a  sudden  yachting  cruise  might 
at  any  moment  carry  Charles  Day  off  beyond  recall. 
Again,  however,  there  were  periods,  blissful  periods, 
when  for  weeks  at  a  time  he  would  take  her  to  drive 
day  after  day,  and  few  were  the  country  roads  in  the 
vicinity  of  Camwood  which  did  not  know  old  Chief's 
long,  swift  stride,  as  he  drew  carryall  or  buggy — little 
did  he  care  which — with  easy  nonchalance  on  a  twen- 
ty-mile reach. 

As  time  went  on  the  buggy  came  more  and  more 
into  use,  for  Archie  soon  exhausted  the  joys  of  driv- 
ing, while  Cousin  Elmira  rarely  found  it  worth  her 
while  to  play  "third  fiddle,"  as  she  would  have  put 
it,  with  that  surprising  ignorance  in  matters  musical 
which  was  always  a  source  of  wonder  to  Charles  Day, 
who,  by  the  way,  had  a  pretty  gift  of  his  own  in  music 
and  could  improvise  by  the  hour  to  the  extreme 
delectation  of  his  little  daughter. 

Charles  had  long  recognized  the  fact  that  Elmira 
was,  socially  speaking,  unremunerative,  and  although 
he  was  obliged  to  admit  that  she  was  useful  to  him- 
self and  doubtless  indispensable  to  the  welfare  of  the 
children,  he  sometimes  had  a  lurking  feeling  that  she 
was  not  a  particularly  motherly  person.  It  was  not 
so  much  his  own  choice  of  a  guardian,  however,  that 


88  Katharine  Day 

he  felt  impelled  to  criticise,  as  the  mistaken  judg- 
ment of  Providence  in  depriving  his  children  of  that 
one  absolutely  congenial  spirit  who,  if  he  could  have 
had  his  way,  would  always  have  ministered  to  them 
and  him. 

"If  only  Lucy  might  have  been  spared,"  he  would 
say  to  himself,  using  the  pious  form  of  speech  com- 
mon to  his  day  and  generation,  but  hardly  with  the 
piety  of  feeling  it  implied, — "If  only  Lucy  had  been 
spared,  we  should  have  been  a  happy  family, — a 
happy  family." 

One  afternoon  in  the  late  spring  Elmira,  plying 
her  needle  in  the  sitting-room,  heard  the  closing  of 
the  front  door,  and  Charles's  voice,  prompt  as  an 
echo,  calling:  "Where  's  Katherine?" 

A  shadow  crossed  the  needlewoman's  face,  as, 
laying  her  work  aside,  she  rose  to  her  feet  and  passed 
out  into  the  hall.  She  found  Charles,  just  returned 
from  a  pleasure  trip,  standing  at  the  bottom  of  the 
stairs  looking,  she  thought,  a  little  flushed.  She  fan- 
cied she  detected  in  his  tone  rather  more  than  usual 
of  affectionate  impatience  as  he  repeated,  and  without 
further  greeting:  "  Where  's  Katherine? " 

He  had  been  absent  from  home  for  several  days, 
and  Elmira  replied  coldly  and  with  a  just  perceptible 
stiffening  of  her  person:  "  Katherine  is  at  her  French 
lesson."  Upon  which  Charles  suddenly  became 
aware  that  he  had  been  remiss. 

"And  how  is  Elmira?"  he  asked,  with  that  in- 
stantaneous recovery  of  his  good  humor  which  made 
its  occasional  eclipse  only  an  added  charm. 

He  came  and  took  one  of  her  hands  in  both  his, 
stroking  it  with  conciliatory  intent.  Years  ago,  when 
she  first  came  to  live  with  him,  he  had  occasionally 


Almost  a  Quarrel  89 

kissed  Elmira  with  the  affectionate  brotherliness  he 
thought  her  due,  but  the  habit  was  soon  discontinued ; 
for,  as  he  confided  to  his  mother,  it  was  too  much  like 
kissing  an  iceberg.  And  Elmira,  who  had  bitterly 
resented  that  indifferent,  perfunctory  salute,  had 
yet  never  ceased  to  resent  its  discontinuance. 

To-day  she  coldly  withdrew  her  hand  and  asked 
her  cousin  if  he  proposed  being  at  home  to  supper. 

"Oh,  yes,"  he  replied.  "And  you  'd  better  have 
it  rather  late,  as  I  want  Katherine  to  take  a  drive 
with  me.  When  is  that  bothersome  French  lesson 
over?" 

"The  lesson  is  over  at  five  o'clock,  but  there  's 
never  any  telling  when  Katherine  will  come  home. 
As  like  as  not  she  will  be  playing  croquet  with  Winny 
Gerald  until  tea-time." 

"Well,  supposing  she  is!  Where  's  the  harm?" 
Charles  retorted,  answering  Elmira's  tone  rather 
than  her  words. 

"  I  said  nothing  about  there  being  any  harm  in  it," 
was  the  frigid  reply. 

"At  any  rate,"  her  cousin  declared,  nettled  by  an 
indefinable  air  of  misprision  which  struck  him  as 
disagreeably  familiar, — "At  any  rate  I  shall  head  her 
off  from  any  immoral  proceedings  by  picking  her  up 
at  five  o'clock!"  and  stepping  to  the  rear  of  the  hall 
he  pulled  the  bell-rope  which  communicated  with  the 
stable. 

Five  minutes  later  Charles  had  followed  Elmira 
into  the  sitting-room,  where  she  was  again  at  her 
work.  As  his  eye_fell  upon  her,  bending  over  some 
white  garment  which  was  manifestly  meant  for  Kath- 
erine, his  heart  softened. 

"I  don't  suppose  you  would  care  to  go  with  us, 


go  Katherine  Day 

Elmira,"  he  remarked.  "But  I  should  think  it 
might  be  better  for  you  than  sitting  at  home  this  fine 
day.  Sha'n't  we  have  Chief  put  into  the  carry- 
all?" 

"Thank  you,  but  I  have  my  work  to  do."  The 
tone  in  which  she  spoke  the  words  made  them  seem 
like  a  retort.  Elmira  had  perhaps  never  come  so 
near  quarrelling  with  her  cousin. 

Drawing  up  a  chair,  Charles  seated  himself  near 
this  colorless,  inarticulate  antagonist,  and  watched 
her  for  some  minutes  in  silence,  as  she  plied  her  needle 
with  the  accuracy  and  persistence  which  character- 
ized all  she  did.  He  was  for  the  first  time  struck  with 
the  change  which  the  last  few  years  had  wrought  in 
her.  Perhaps  the  curve  of  the  back,  sharply  sil- 
houetted against  the  window,  emphasized  the  im- 
pression, for  Elmira's  back  was  a  straight  one,  and  the 
unchanged  rectitude  of  her  figure  might  well  deceive 
the  casual  observer  into  the  belief  that  the  years  had 
not  yet  got  a  real  hold  upon  her.  To-day  the  bending 
back,  strong  and  supple  as  its  outline  was,  had  its 
full  share  in  the  new  impression  he  was  receiving. 
Was  that  a  streak  of  gray  in  the  dun-colored  hair? 
Was  the  outline  of  the  chin  getting  a  bit  sharp  ?  Was 
there  a  slight  sinking  in  the  bony  structure  of  the 
temples?  Elmira  must  be  well  past  forty.  He 
wondered  if  she  felt  old — and  cross — and  tired.  For 
the  first  time  in  all  these  years  something  in  the  na- 
ture of  a  feeling  seemed  to  be  disturbing  her  equan- 
imity. There!  she  had  broken  her  needle!  He  did 
not  know  whether  she  was  in  the  habit  of  doing  so, — 
he  had  never  before  watched  her  so  closely  at  her 
work, — but,  as  the  thin  steel  snapped,  the  incident 
struck  him  as  out  of  character, 


Almost  a  Quarrel  91 

"Couldn't  you  hire  somebody  to  do  that  sew- 
ing?" he  asked,  suddenly.  "You  know  I  have  al- 
ways wanted  you  to  have  more  workpeople  in." 

Elmira  was  carefully  wrapping  up  the  two  frag- 
ments of  the  needle,  pending  their  consignment  to 
the  kitchen  fire. 

"There  's  only  one  way  of  having  your  work  prop- 
erly done,"  she  answered,  curtly.  Yes,  there  was 
no  doubt  that  something  had  gone  wrong  with 
Elmira. 

"I'm  afraid  you're  a  perfectionist,"  he  sighed, 
with  a  humorous  grimace  that  was  lost  upon  her. 
"So  few  of  us  can  afford  to  be  that,"  he  added  after 
waiting  a  moment  for  the  reply  that  was  not  forth- 
coming. 

Elmira  was  threading  a  fresh  needle,  and  he  noticed 
that  she  held  it  far  from  her  eyes.  "Yes,  she  's 
growing  old,  poor  thing,"  he  thought  to  himself. 
"My  eyes  are  better  than  that,  and  I  am  older  than 
she." 

It  is  gratifying  in  full  middle  life  to  feel  as  young 
as  ever  you  did,  and,  with  the  magnanimity  of  good 
fortune,  Charles  longed  to  give  Elmira  a  pleasure. 
His  face,  as  she  glanced  toward  it,  was  beaming  with 
good  will;  but  his  words  were  ill  chosen. 

"Supposing  you  come  with  me  in  the  buggy,"  he 
said;  "  I  don't  believe  Katherine  would  mind  if  we 
were  to  leave  her  out  this  time." 

So  it  had  come  to  this; — that  Charles  could  not 
even  take  her  to  drive  without  deferring  to  Kather- 
ine! He  could  not  have  spoken  differently  if  it 
had  been  Lucy  herself.  And  she,  Elmira  Faxon, 
was  to  take  her  privileges  conditionally  upon  Kath- 
erine's  good  pleasure.  A  lifelong  habit  of  repression 


92  Katherine  Day 

restrained  her  rising  anger,  and  she  merely  repeated 
her  refusal.  But  as  she  spoke  the  perfunctory 
words,  she  became  aware  that  a  purpose  which  had 
long  lain  dormant  within  her  was  coming  to  life. 

"Charles,"  she  said,  without  stopping  in  her 
work, — "Charles,  have  you  never  thought  of  sending 
Katherine  to  boarding-school?" 

It  would  be  relaxing  her  own  control,  as  she  had 
repeatedly  told  herself,  but  also  it  would  cause  a 
break  in  this  increasing  intimacy  between  Charles 
and  the  girl  which  was  so  often  an  offence  to  her- 
self. For  the  time  being,  at  least,  she  would  be 
spared  the  mortification  of  seeing  herself  relegated 
to  a  secondary  place  in  the  household  of  which  she 
was  the  nominal  head.  That  would  be  a  great  point 
gained, — one  which  was  well  worth  the  effort  the 
proposition  was  costing  her.  A  dark  flush  slowly 
crept  over  the  inexpressive  face  as  Elmira  bent 
above  her  needlework,  waiting  for  her  cousin  to 
speak. 

It  seemed  ages  before  Charles  answered.  He  got 
up  and  walked  across  the  room  and  drummed  on  the 
window-pane;  and  then  he  came  and  stood  beside 
her. 

"Are  you  getting  tired  of  your  bargain,  Elmira?" 
he  asked.  "  Do  you  want  your  independence  ?  Would 
you  like  to  go  back  to  your  own  house  ? ' ' 

It  was  a  cruel  shock  to  Elmira ;  her  face  went  pale 
again,  and  the  stitching  wavered  a  little  in  its  reg- 
ularity. 

"Not  unless  you  want  me  to,"  she  said  in  a  low, 
hesitating  tone. 

"Then  what  could  have  put  such  an  idea  into  your 
head?" 


Almost  a  Quarrel  93 

"There  is  nothing  very  startling  in  the  sugges- 
tion," she  declared,  recovering  herself.  "The  Lit- 
tlefield  girls  have  been  at  boarding-school  in  Con- 
necticut this  year,  and  their  mother  thinks  it  has 
been  an  excellent  thing  for  them." 

"  I  have  no  doubt  of  it,"  Charles  replied  with  sud- 
den asperity.  "There  was  room  for  improvement 
in  those  little  meaching  Littlefields  and  it  must 
have  done  them  good  to  be  waked  up.  But  that 
does  n't  seem  any  special  reason  why  my  girl  should 

go-" 

By  this  time  Elmira's  blood  was  up.  It  had  cost 
her  a  great  effort  to  make  the  proposition,  but  having 
made  it  she  was  determined  to  stand  by  it. 

"I  suppose,  Charles,"  she  remarked  quietly,  "that 
you  would  hardly  have  entrusted  your  children  to  my 
care  if  you  had  not  had  some  confidence  in  my  judg- 
ment." 

"Why  of  course,  of  course,"  he  said;  " I  have  every 
confidence  in  your  judgment.  But  this  is  a  pretty 
important  step  you  are  suggesting,  and  one  that  I  am 
particularly  opposed  to.  Of  course,  if  you  have  any 
special  reasons — 

"I  have  a  number  of  reasons,"  Elmira  answered, 
carefully  weighing  her  words.  "Katherine  is  very 
much  in  need  of  the  stricter  discipline  of  a  boarding- 
school.  " 

"Stricter  discipline!"  Charles  repeated.  "She  has 
always  had  discipline  enough.  Why,  the  child  would 
no  more  think  of  deliberately  disobeying  you  or  me 
than — old  Chief  would." 

"Perhaps  I  know  her  better  than  you  do,"  Elmira 
retorted,  driven  to  saying  more  than  she  had  in- 
tended. 


94  Katharine  Day 

"  Have  you  any  complaints  to  make  of  her?"  asked 
Charles,  sharply. 

"I  never  make  complaints,"  was  the  cold  reply. 
"But  if  you  do  not  know  that  Katherine  has  always 
been  a  very  difficult  child  to  manage  you  are  quite 
alone  in  your  ignorance." 

"  Elmira,  I  believe  you  are  tired  of  us,"  he  declared, 
stepping  close  to  her.-  She  had  stopped  sewing,  but 
she  did  not  look  up  as  he  stood  tall  above  her  looking 
down.  "I  don't 'much  wonder,"  he  added;  "it  has 
been  a  long  pull,  and  if  you  find  us  troublesome,  why 
— you  are  an  independent  woman." 

There  was  no  answer. 

"I  have  no  doubt  we  should  manage  very  well," 
he  went  on,  seriously  considering  the  situation. 
' '  Katherine  will  be  fourteen  next  month ;  she  will 
soon  be  old  enough,  in  any  case,  to  take  the  reins. 
She  is  an  unusually  capable  girl  and,  although  I 
should  hate  to  give  her  the  care  so  soon,  she  could 
probably  keep  things  going  very  well." 

Elmira  rose  to  her  feet,  which  brought  her  standing 
close  to  her  cousin  and  looking  straight  into  his  eyes. 

"  I  shall  think  of  what  you  have  said,  Charles." 

The  words  came  hard  and  grudging  from  her  half- 
closed  lips,  almost  as  if  her  teeth  were  shut  together, 
and  in  her  eyes  was  a  look  of  mortal  offence. 

As  she  glided  past  him  toward  the  door  he  could  not 
but  think  how  well  she  walked  and  how  becoming  any 
expression,  even  that  of  fierce  resentment,  was  to  her 
usually  inexpressive  face.  He  had  never  supposed 
her  so  touchy,  and  —  he  did  n't  want  to  hurt  her 
feelings. 

"Elmira,"  he  called;  "don't  go  off  like  that!" 

He  overtook  her  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs.     She 


Almost  a  Quarrel  95 

turned,  with  one  foot  on  the  lower  step,  her  hand  rest- 
ing on  the  curve  of  the  polished  mahogany  balustrade 
which  was  supported  by  thin  white  posts.  The  carpet 
of  the  stairs  was  a  dark  red,  and  her  severe  face  was 
defined  sharp  against  it.  She  had  probably  never 
looked  so  well  in  her  life. 

Charles  put  his  hand  on  her  shoulder. 

"You  wouldn't  desert  us,  though;  would  you, 
Elmira?  We  could  n't  let  you  go, — not  for  a  long  time 
yet!" 

She  winced  inwardly.  It  seemed  to  her  that  he 
was  naming  the  date  of  her  departure.  He  felt  that 
he  was  hurting  her,  and  with  a  sudden  impulse  of 
affectionate  compunction,  he  drew  her  to  him  and 
kissed  her.  She  did  not  return  the  caress.  On  the 
contrary,  her  form  became  rigid,  and  drawing  in- 
stantly away  from  him  she  mounted  another  of  the 
dark  red  steps  and  stood,  her  lips  parted  for  speech. 

"Oh,  there  's  Chief  coming  "round!"  called  a  clear 
young  voice  from  without.  "  Good-by,  Winny ;  good- 
by,  Sally!  Father  's  got  home!"  and  there  was  the 
sound  of  quick  feet  running  around  the  gravel  walk  to 
the  side  door. 

The  two  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  had  heard  the  voice 
and  the  footsteps,  and  Elmira's  lips  had  closed  again. 

"I  'm  sorry  not  to  agree  with  you  about  this," 
Charles  Day  said,  detaining  his  cousin  as  she  turned 
away;  " and  perhaps  it 's  very  selfish  of  me,  but, — the 
fact  is,  I  can't  spare  Katherine!" 

He  stood  watching  the  tall,  slender  figure  as  it  passed 
slowly  up  the  red  stairway.  Elmira  did  not  look  back, 
and  he  was  on  the  point  of  calling  after  her  some  con- 
ciliatory word.  The  interview  had  been  an  uncom- 
fortable one  and  he  would  have  liked  to  see  a  more 


96  Katharine  Day 

friendly  expression  on  her  face  at  parting.  He  would 
have  liked  that  she  should  pause  at  the  foot  of  the  tall 
clock  on  the  landing,  just  at  the  curve  of  the  stairway, 
— that  she  should  pause  and  turn  that  thin,  proud 
neck  of  hers  and  give  him  a  kind  look.  Charles  Day 
was  rarely  at  a  loss  for  the  right  word,  and  he  surely 
would  have  found  it.  But — "O  Father!"  came  the 
» young  girl's  voice  at  the  other  end  of  the  passageway; 
"0  Father!  I  'm  so  glad  you  Ve  come  back!  And  are 
you  going  to  stay?  And  did  you  get  some  ducks? 
And  are  we  going  to  drive?" 

"Yes,  Chatterbox!  Chief  seems  to  think  we  had 
better;  so  put  your  hat  straight  and  come  along!" 

And  thus  it  came  about  that  Charles  did  not  capture 
the  friendly  word  and  glance  he  thought  he  wanted; 
and — what  was  sadder  still  for  poor  Elmira — he  never 
missed  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FATHER    AND    DAUGHTER 

"  On   the   earth   the  broken  arcs  ;  in  the  heaven,  a  perfect 
round." 

ONE  of  old  Chief's  most  engaging  qualities  was  his 
discrimination  in  regard  to  persons.  His  social 
nature  was  highly  developed,  and  the  distinctions  he 
made,  though  very  marked,  were  not  based  upon  such 
carnal  motives  as  are  supposed  to  actuate  the  equine 
mind.  Although  the  apparent  source  of  all  his  bless- 
ings was  Fred,  the  hostler,  and  although  he  was  on 
perfectly  friendly  terms  with  that  functionary,  he 
made  no  secret  of  his  preference  for  Mr.  Day  to  all 
other  persons  of  his  acquaintance.  He  might  neigh 
for  his  dinner,  when  that  meal  was  too  long  delayed, 
but  it  was  in  a  tone  of  remonstrance, — something 
totally  different  from  the  gentle  whinny  with  which 
he  greeted  the  sound  of  the  master's  step.  And  if,  of 
late,  Katherine  had  come  in  for  her  share  of  this 
pleasant  attention,  she  was  quite  justified  in  regarding 
it  as  a  peculiar  compliment. 

"You  are  getting  to  be  quite  a  whip,"  Charles  Day 
remarked,  after  observing  for  some  minutes  the  firm, 
steady  action  of  Katherine 's  small  hands  upon  the 
reins.  "That  's  as  good  a  gait  as  he  gives  me." 

Chief  was  always  a  capital  roadster, — indeed  he  was 


98  Katherine  Day 

far  too  self-respecting  to  shuffle  or  lag  under  any  cir- 
cumstances; yet  it  was  perfectly  well  understood  that 
he  did  not  squander  his  best  efforts  upon  his  inferiors. 

Katherine  blushed  with  pleasure  at  this  encomium, 
casting  the  while  a  furtive  glance  at  her  father's  rap- 
idly vanishing  cigar.  When  that  was  consumed  he 
would  take  the  reins.  But  then,  that  too  was  pleasant, 
—to  sit  beside  him,  with  eyes  and  thoughts  free  to 
wander  where  they  would,  while  the  small  tongue 
wagged  accordingly.  And  presently,  as  he  flung  the 
cigar  stump  into  a  passing  ditch,  the  master  quietly 
and  as  a  matter  of  course  possessed  himself  of  the  reins. 

Old  Chief  gave  a  slight  forward  tilt  of  his  left  ear 
with  a  view  to  indicating  an  intelligent  participation 
in  events ;  but  there  was  not  that  prompt  bracing  of 
himself  for  better  work  which  used  to  mark  the 
transfer.  And  indeed  it  must  have  been  an  exact- 
ing driver  who  could  ask  for  anything  better  than  he 
had  been  giving  them  from  the  start. 

They  were  driving  along  a  pretty  road  fringed  with 
homely  beauties, — the  white  star  of  the  blackberry 
gleaming  slight  and  fragile  among  the  ruder  manifes- 
tations of  barberry  bush  and  arbor- vitae.  Blossom- 
ing fruit  trees  leaned  lazily  over  stone  walls,  the 
young  green  of  the  willows  drooped  above  every 
water-course,  while  here  and  there  a  straight-backed 
maple  lifted  its  crown  of  crimson  tips  against  the 
bright  blue  of  the  sky. 

To  Katherine's  mind,  well  as  she  liked  the  buds  and 
blossoms,  these  leafy  bowers  were  mainly  interesting 
as  home  or  hiding-place  for  the  wild  creatures  she  so 
dearly  loved.  It  was  bird  and  squirrel,  frog  and  but- 
terfly, that  caught  her  attention  and  tempted  her  eye 
to  roam ;  it  was  for  their  sake  that  she  could  relinquish 


Father  and  Daughter  99 

the  reins  without  a  pang.  As  Chief  went  clattering 
across  a  bridge  of  planks  there  was  a  hasty  splash  in 
the  stream  below,  and  a  sudden  shower  of  drops  spat- 
tered the  blue  faces  of  the  forget-me-nots  clustering 
on  the  water's  edge. 

" Do  you  suppose  that  was  a  musk-rat?"  Katherine 
cried  excitedly. 

"  More  likely  to  be  a  bull-frog,"  was  the  unimagina- 
tive rejoinder;  and  Charles  flicked  a  fly  off  Chief's 
back.  Many  a  horse  would  have  misunderstood  the 
action,  and  felt  obliged  to  start  and  make  a  pretence 
of  increasing  his  speed.  But  Chief  only  wrinkled  his 
coat  a  bit  in  acknowledgment,  and  kept  his  even  gait. 

"Don't  you  like  bull-frogs?"  Katherine  inquired. 
It  struck  her  that  her  companion  had  spoken  rather 
slightingly  of  that  highly  respectable  member  of  the 
animal  creation. 

Charles  Day's  countenance  took  on  the  quizzical 
look  which  sometimes  puzzled  but  always  pleased  this 
crony  of  his,  and  she  felt  delightedly  sure  that  he  was 
going  to  make  a  joke. 

"I  don't  know  that  I  ever  got  really  acquainted 
with  a  bull-frog,"  he  jested;  "but,  if  I  were  to  pass  a 
hasty  criticism,  I  should  say  they  were  inclined  to 
talk  too  much." 

Katherine  smiled  in  great  content. 

"It  's  lucky  for  me  that  you  don't  dislike  all  talka- 
tive persons,"  she  remarked  demurely.  "Cousin  El- 
mira  says  she  gets  tired  of  the  sound  of  my  voice." 

A  long  pause  ensued,  during  which  Katherine 's  at- 
tention was  first  monopolized  by  a  regiment  of  crows 
strutting  about  a  ploughed  field,  where  a  limp  rag  man 
appeared  to  exercise  a  peculiar  fascination  over  those 
whom  he  was  intended  to  terrify.  Then,  as  they  left 


ioo  Katherine  Day 

the  noisy  caucus  behind  them,  the  young  girl's  eye  was 
caught  by  a  great  bird  of  prey  mounting  falcon-like 
skyward.  Her  thoughts  were  far,  far  away,  following 
him  in  his  splendid  flight,  when  her  father's  voice 
recalled  her  from  the  skies. 

"So;  Cousin  Elmira  gets  tired  of  the  sound  of  your 
voice,  does  she?"  he  asked,  with  a  trace  of  displeasure 
in  his  tone. 

"  Yes! "  Katherine  admitted,  adding  in  self-defence: 
"but  really  she  does  n't  hear  me  talk  so  very  much. 
I  'm  at  school,  or  playing  out-of-doors,  most  of  the 
time,  and  she  never  lets  me  sit  with  her  when  it  rains 
and  I  have  to  be  in  the  house. ' ' 

"And  you  would  like  to  sit  with  her?" 

"Oh,  I  'm  not  so  particular  about  that!" — and 
Katherine  gave  a  little  resentful  toss  of  her  head 
which  was  not  calculated  to  deceive  her  interlocutor. 

His  face  clouded.  Another  quarter-mile  had  been 
left  behind  them  before  he  asked:  "  Katherine,  are  you 
fond  of  Cousin  Elmira?" 

"Oh,  I  suppose  so!"  was  the  reply,  given  in  a  pre- 
occupied tone.  A  half-grown  colt,  scampering  across 
the  great  Lincoln  pasture,  had  already  driven  Elmira 
from  her  thoughts. 

Under  ordinary  circumstances  Charles  Day  would 
not  have  pressed  the  subject;  he  had  no  taste  for  em- 
barrassing discussions.  But  to-day  he  found  himself 
the  prey  to  an  unaccustomed  anxiety.  Something 
compounded  of  irritation  and  solicitude  impelled  him 
to  say:  "That  's  no  answer.  Is  she  good  to  you? 
Does  she  make  you  happy?" 

The  colt  had  disappeared  in  a  dip  of  the  field,  and 
Katherine  was  free  to  consider  the  subject  in  hand. 

"Oh,  I  don't  need  her  to  make  me  happy,"  she 


Father  and  Daughter  101 

answered  cheerfully;  "I  've  got  lots  of  better  things 
than  that." 

There  was  no  intentional  evasion  in  the  reply;  it 
was  simply  the  natural  working  of  the  child's  mind. 
What  was  it  in  the  little  speech  that  made  him  think 
of  Lucy?  He  did  not  often  catch  the  likeness  to  his 
wife  which  he  had  once  so  unluckily  commented  on  in 
Elmira's  hearing,  but  to-day  he  felt  it  strongly.  The 
tone,  too,  the  spirit,  of  the  child's  words  was  start- 
lingly  like  her  mother.  Indeed,  now  that  he  came  to 
think  of  it,  the  phrase  itself  was  Lucy's  own.  How 
often  had  she  said,  when  he  grew  restless  and  craved 
one  or  another  indulgence  that  circumstances  forbade 
— to  have  a  yacht  of  their  own,  or  to  take  her  to 
Europe  in  spite  of  the  babies — how  often  had  she 
said:  "Never  mind,  Charles,  we  have  better  things 
than  that, — you  and  I." 

And  Elmira  Faxon  would  not  let  Lucy's  girl  sit  in 
the  room  with  her  of  a  rainy  day.  Whose  house  was 
it,  he  should  like  to  know,  and  who  was  Elmira  Faxon, 
that  she  should  turn  Lucy's  child  away?  A  sudden 
access  of  anger  seized  him,  and  swept  him  out  of  his 
easy  indolence. 

"Come,  Katherine,"  he  commanded,  rather  sharply, 
"let 's  make  a  clean  breast  of  it.  Is  Elmira  hateful  to 
you?" 

There  was  no  answer.  Katherine  had -never  heard 
an  Olympian  so  roughly  spoken  of  and  she  was  shocked 
into  silence. 

They  had  come  to  a  steep  incline  and  Chief  had 
fallen  into  the  prompt,  business-like  walk  which  was 
one  of  his  shining  virtues. 

Charles  Day,  who  was  a  born  wheedler,  slipped  his 
arm  about  the  little  girl,  and  drawing  her  close  to  him, 


io2  Katharine  Day 

said:  "Tell  me,  darling;  tell  me  all  about  it";  and 
Katherine,  carried  away  by  such  an  irresistible  appeal, 
wrapped,  too,  in  a  sense  of  all-encompassing  love  and 
protection,  as  new  to  her  experience  as  it  was  delight- 
ful, opened  her  lips  and  opened  her  heart  for  the  first 
time  in  her  life. 

There  was  no  direct  arraignment  of  Cousin  Elmira; 
Katherine  was  yet  too  subject  to  that  stern  deity  to 
judge  her  on  an  equal  plane.  But  the  habitual  ret- 
icence which  was  strictly  an  acquired  trait  gave  way 
before  her  father's  questions,  and  ere  they  had  reached 
the  end  of  the  two-mile  hill,  Charles  Day  had  formed 
a  pretty  clear  idea  of  the  situation.  He  was  deeply 
moved, — more  deeply  moved  than  he  had  been  since 
Lucy  died.  His  face  grew  flushed  and  his  questions 
came  fast  and  urgent ;  and  all  the  while  he  held  his  arm 
protectingly  about  his  little  daughter. 

At  last:  "How  about  Archie?"  he  asked.  "Does 
he  get  on  better?"  . 

"Oh,  yes;  Cousin  Elmira  likes  Archie.  Everybody 
likes  Archie,"  she  added,  with  sisterly  loyalty. 
"They  could  n't  help  it." 

"And  they  can  help  liking  Katherine?" 

"Oh,  yes!  I  don't  think  anybody  likes  me  particu- 
larly unless — "  and  the  child  looked  up,  half  shyly, 
half  defiantly,  into  the  kind,  tender  face  above  her, — 
for  Charles  Day's  face  could  be  wonderfully  tender. 

"Unless?"  he  repeated. 

"Unless  it  's  you,"  she  whispered,  hiding  her  face 
in  her  father's  coat  and  wondering  whether  the  sky 
would  fall. 

"  By  George,  Katherine!  You  are  like  your  mother," 
he  exclaimed,  as  he  lifted  her  face  and  kissed  it  with  a 
sudden  passionate  tenderness. 


Father  and  Daughter  103 

Just  then  they  got  to  the  top  of  the  hill  where  the 
country  opened  out  into  dreamy  distances  in  the 
warm,  late  light;  and  as  Chief  started  of  his  own  ac- 
cord into  a  swift  trot,  and  they  sped  lightly  along  the 
road  that  wound  about  the  brow  of  the  hill,  Charles 
Day  fell  to  talking  to  the  child  of  her  mother,  and  of 
the  time  when  Katherine  should  take  her  mother's 
place  and  keep  his  house  for  him,  and  they  could  let 
Cousin  Elmira  go  to  her  own  house  where  there  would 
be  no  troublesome  little  girls  to  be  disagreeable  to, — 
this  with  a  twinkle  of  good  understanding  that  filled 
the  measure  of  the  child's  happiness. 

"And  mind,  Katherine,"  he  said,  half  an  hour  later, 
as  they  found  themselves  driving  down  their  own 
street  where  the  shadows  were  growing  thick  under 
the  budding  elms;  "mind  you  don't  let  things  get 
too  bad  without  telling  me." 

"Oh,  they  '11  never  get  bad  again,"  Katherine  re- 
turned, with  a  cheerful  assurance,  under  which  a  little 
tremor  of  a  deeper  feeling  was  not  to  be  concealed ; 
"they  '11  never  get  bad  as  long  as  I  have  you." 

"And  supposing  you  don't  have  me?"  he  asked. 
"You  know  I  am  often  away  for  a  long  time." 

He  had  been  thinking  of  a  few  months  abroad,  and 
although  he  had  been  stirred  to  an  unusual  degree  by 
the  events  of  the  day,  he  was  by  no  means  prepared  to 
relinquish  the  pleasure. 

"Oh,"  Katherine  answered,  "I  shall  always  have 
you — now — wherever  you  are." 

"Even  if  I  were  to  go  abroad  for  the  summer?"  he 
asked,  with  a  sudden  impulse  to  test  her  spirit. 

She  winced  a  bit,  and  caught  her  breath ;  but  only  to 
say  very  pluckily  "Oh,  I  should  never  feel  really 
deserted, — even  if  you  were  to  go  on  a  trip  to  the 


IO4  Katharine  Day 

moon,"  she  added,  as  they  drew  up  before  the  door. 
It  was  the  sight  of  the  young  moon,  showing  thin  and 
white  against  the  sunset  sky,  that  prompted  her  to 
give  this  light  turn  to  her  eager  statement.  She  knew 
her  father  too  well  to  keep  the  serious  tone  to  the  end. 

"That  's  right,"  he  replied,  with  hearty  approval. 
"  Now  hop  out  and  get  ready  for  supper,  while  I  drive 
Chief  into  the  barn.  Fred  will  hardly  have  got  back 
yet  from  Belmont.  He  was  to  take  old  Fan  over  for 
a  load  of  hay  this  afternoon." 

The  glow  of  a  wonderful  experience  was  still  at 
Katherine's  heart  when  she  came  down-stairs  ten 
minutes  later.  She  found  Cousin  Elmira  moving  about 
with  a  quite  unaccustomed  restlessness.  It  was  noth- 
ing unusual  to  wait  supper  for  Charles,  but  to-night 
Elmira  was  impatient,  not  for  her  supper,  but  for  his 
return.  The  time  had  seemed  long  since  she  left  him 
there  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs, — time  to  go  over  the  in- 
terview in  her  thoughts  again  and  again.  She  had 
been  betrayed  into  friction  with  him,  she  had  lost 
command  of  the  situation,  she  could  not  feel  sure  until 
she  saw  his  face  that  the  affair  had  made  as  little  im- 
pression upon  him  as  she  must  needs  hope, — though 
the  hope  hurt  her. 

Katherine  stepped  to  the  window  and  watched  the 
brightening  crescent  of  the  moon  as  it  dipped  toward 
the  horizon.  No,  she  should  not  feel  deserted,  even  if 
he  were  to  take  that  little  trip  to  the  moon.  That  was 
a  fancy  which  she  could  smile  at ;  it  was  easy  to  be 
brave  where  there  was  nothing  to  fear.  Nice  moon, 
to  make  her  say  the  right  thing!  Hark!  how  Chief 
was  whinnying !  Her  father  must  be  unharnessing  him, 
that  he  stayed  so  long.  And  there  was  the  click  of 
wooden  mallet  and  ball  where  Archie  was  practising 


Father  and  Daughter  105 

long  shots  on  the  croquet  ground  at  the  other  side  of 
the  house. 

"What 's  detaining  your  father? "  Elmira  asked  sud- 
denly. "He  was  not  going  to  unharness,  was  he?" 

"I  did  n't  know  he  was,  but  I  think  that  must  be 
what  keeps  him,"  Katherine  answered,  longing  to 
go  out  to  him.  "Don't  you  hear  Chief  whinnying?" 

"Run  and  see,"  Elmira  commanded.  "But  don't 
tell  him  I  sent  to  ask,"  she  added,  hastily; — "and 
don't  go  into  the  barn  in  your  good  frock." 

Katherine  was  at  the  door  in  an  instant.  But 
again  Elmira's  voice  arrested  her. 

"Wait,"  she  called;  "wait!  I  think  I  '11  come  too." 

Was  it  that  she  had  grown  nervously  apprehensive 
about  the  unhappy  discussion  of  the  afternoon, — 
about  that  parting  on  the  stairs  when  she  had  not 
looked  back?  Or  was  there  in  that  reticent,  unim- 
aginative nature  an  unsuspected  chord  that  could 
vibrate  to  a  premonition? 

As  their  steps  sounded  on  the  gravel  driveway, 
Chief  whinnied  again.  It  was  not  a  sound  he  had 
ever  made  before;  it  was  neither  hunger  nor  affec- 
tion. It  was  —  yes,  it  was  the  purely  human  sen- 
timent of  anxiety, —  or  so  it  always  sounded  in 
Katherine's  memory. 

Whatever  it  might  be,  it  struck  terror  to  the  hearts 
of  both,  and  woman  and  girl  hurried  forward,  urged  at 
last  by  a  common  impulse. 

The  door  of  the  carriage-house  stood  wide  open, 
and  there,  in  the  deepening  twilight,  they  could  see 
the  rear  of  the  buggy  drawn  well  over  the  threshold. 
At  their  approach  Chief  whinnied  again,  but  there 
was  no  other  sound, — nothing  in  fact  to  indicate  the 
master's  presence. 


io6  Katherine  Day 

"Father!" — the  child's  voice  was  sharp  with  a 
strange,  unreasoning  fear — "Father!" 

And  Chief  whinnied  again. 

And  now,  unmindful  of  good  frocks  and  long  skirts, 
they  had  come  close  beside  the  great  beast,  standing, 
still  in  the  shafts,  his  bridle  off,  his  collar  turned  point 
outward,  as  if  it  had  given  trouble,  his  noble  head 
bent  anxiously  above  a  dark  mass  at  his  feet. 

How  many  minutes  was  it  since  Charles  Day  had 
loosed  his  hold  on  that  heavy  collar? — "A  bit  tight  it 
was  and  bothersome-like  to  turn,"  Fred  told  them, 
later;  "an'  a  man  might  strain  hisself  at  it," — how 
many  minutes  since  he  had  slid  to  the  feet  of  his  faith- 
ful servant,  and  lain  there,  his  body  in  a  heap,  his 
head  stayed  against  the  great,  motionless  forefeet? 

It  was  Katherine  who  lifted  the  head  and  pushed 
the  great  feet  gently  back.  And  Chief  recognized  her 
authority,  and,  treading  softly,  carefully,  he  backed 
against  the  buggy,  causing  the  shafts  to  drop  noisily 
from  the  straps,  while  the  rear  wheels  slid  down  the 
broad  incline  of  the  threshold  and  grated  on  the 
gravel  below. 

And  again  Chief  whinnied  anxiously,  but  more 
softly  now. 

Elmira  was  on  her  knees  there  in  the  shadow, 
touching  the  cold  forehead,  the  limp,  cold  hands; 
pressing  thin,  searching,  sensitive  fingers  against  the 
still  breast. 

"We  saw  the  doctor's  chaise  in  front  of  the  Wil- 
sons' gate  as  we  drove  by,"  Katherine  whispered 
huskily. 

Elmira  drew  back  and  rose  slowly  to  her  feet.  In 
the  deepening  twilight  of  that  shadowy  interior  she 
could  still  see  the  white,  upturned  face,  showing  dis- 


Father  and   Daughter  107 

tinct  against  the  child's  breast,  and  the  outline  of  the 
small,  dark  head  bent  above  it. 

Yes,  the  doctor  must  be  called;  all  those  futile 
measures  must  be  taken,  and  she, — she  who  knew 
their  uselessness  must  go. 

"Can  you  hold  him  so  until  I  come?"  she  asked, 
while  every  word  hurt  her, with  a  piercing,  rending  hurt. 

Katherine  lifted  a  face  as  white  as  the  one  on  her 
breast. 

"I  could  hold  him  forever,"  she  said,  with  an  awe- 
struck restraint  in  her  voice;  and  Elmira  knew  that 
the  child's  instinct  had  divined  the  truth  as  surely  as 
her  own  homely  science  had  done. 

As  she  passed  swiftly  along  the  driveway  again, 
Elmira  could  hear  the  sound  of  Archie's  mallet  knock- 
ing the  croquet-balls  about  in  the  gathering  dusk ;  but 
she  did  not  call  to  him,  nor  did  she  give  the  alarm  at 
the  house.  She  did  not  yet  trust  herself  to  admit  in 
words  the  fear,  the  certainty,  that  had  entered  into  her 
as  the  one  overwhelming  reality  of  her  consciousness. 

And  Katherine? — the  child,  sitting  there  with  that 
lifeless  head  against  her  breast, — knowing  the  truth? 
It  was  not  with  pity,  not  with  solicitude,  that  Elmira 
thought  of  her.  Yet  there  was  no  intentional  cruelty 
in  the  woman's  heart, — only  a  literal  acceptance  of 
the  child's  solemn  avowal  that  she  could  hold  him 
forever,  and  a  fierce  envy  that  interpreted  her  own 
strange  action  in  terms  of  magnanimity. 

The  doctor's  chaise  was  no  longer  at  the  Wilsons' 
gate,  and,  with  a  sense  almost  of  relief,  the  messen- 
ger bent  her  steps  in  the  direction  of  his  house,  a  half- 
mile  distant.  And  in  that  swift,  silent  walk,  through 
the  deepening  twilight,  Elmira  Faxon  came  face  to 
face  with  herself. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A    VISION  OF  THE    NIGHT 
"  How  can  man  love  but  what  he  yearns  to  help  ?  " 

ELMIRA  was  right;  at  that  moment,  Katherine 
was  not  to  be  pitied.  And  in  her  recognition 
of  the  fact,  Elmira,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  did 
justice  to  the  character  of  the  child.  That  fierce 
throb  of  envy,  with  which  she  thought  of  her,  was  an 
unconscious  tribute  to  her  strength  of  feeling, — to 
the  real  spiritual  force  of  the  young  nature,  that  she 
had  so  long  and  so  wilfully  misjudged. 

I  do  not  think  Katherine  took  any  note  of  El- 
mira's  prolonged  absence;  certainly  she  experienced 
no  impatience  for  her  return.  From  the  moment 
that  she  felt  the  dead  weight  of  her  father's  head 
against  her  breast,  she  had  known  that  there  was  no 
help  that  Elmira  could  give,  no  aid  to  be  looked  for 
through  medical  skill.  Her  mention  of  the  doctor 
was  a  half-mechanical  concession  to  the  habit  which 
generations  have  bred  in  old  and  young. 

She  was  presently  obliged  to  shift  her  constrained 
position  and  to  let  the  heavy  head  rest  upon  her  lap, 
and  as  she  did  so  the  old  horse  took  a  step  forward, 
and,  bending  his  head  above  her,  whinnied  softly. 
The  child  remembered  it  afterward,  as  she  remem- 
bered the  sleepy  chirp  of  a  swallow  under  the  eaves, 


A  Vision  of  the   Night  109 

and  the  pungent  aroma  of  good  barn  smells  that  filled 
her  nostrils;  but  at  the  time  it  did  not  arrest  her  at- 
tention. Her  young  consciousness  centred  in  a  dim 
amaze  upon  the  lifeless  form  before  her,  until  gradu- 
ally that  sense  of  utter  bewilderment  resolved  itself, — 
not  into  consternation,  not  into  grief,  but  into  a  great, 
all-excluding  love.  The  feeling  was  too  profound  for 
expression.  She  was  not  moved  to  touch  her  father's 
face,  to  press  her  lips  to  the  white  brow,  to  give  her 
emotion  outlet  through  any  caress  or  outward  token. 
Her  hands  lay  clasped  upon  his  breast,  her  head  bent 
motionless  above  him,  and  she  knew  only  that  she 
loved  him;  and  because  she  loved  him  and  because 
he  had  loved  her  so  dearly,  and  had  that  very  day 
declared  himself  her  champion,  she  should  hold  him 
forever,  and  no  one  could  ever  rob  her  of  him. 

Although  this  first  exaltation  could  not  endure, 
and  although  cruelly  trying  days  followed, — days  in 
which  the  child  felt  herself  the  more  alone  in  her  sor- 
row because  of  the  general  mourning, — yet  always  she 
could  take  refuge  in  the  memory  of  the  hour  when  he 
was  all  hers,  before  they  took  him  from  her  and 
taught  her  that  her  great  love  was  one  with  an  equal 
sorrow. 

She  found  much  comfort,  too,  in  Archie,  who  was 
truly  touched  by  his  father's  death,  and  who  cried 
with  her  heartily,  that  first  evening  on  the  big  sofa, 
which  had  known  so  many  of  their  childish  con- 
fidences and  not  a  few  of  their  childish  frolics.  Nor 
was  she  altogether  unsusceptible  to. the  dignity  of 
her  own  and  Archie's  position  in  the  family.  Our 
grandmothers  may  have  been  staunch  in  their  re- 
publican principles;  there  is  one  degree  of  rank 
which  they  have  never  failed  to  recognize, — that 


1 10  Katharine  Day 

of  chief  mourner.  And,  accordingly,  for  the  first 
time  in  their  lives,  the  children  of  the  dead  man 
found  themselves  treated  with  something  very  like 
deference. 

It  had  been  of  a  Tuesday  evening  that  Charles 
Day  loosed  his  hold  upon  old  Chief's  collar,  together 
with  his  hold  on  many  things  which  had  made  life 
desirable  to  him  and  its  end  a  matter  for  regret;  and 
on  Wednesday  Winny  came  in  to  call. 

This  dear  and  adored  friend,  who  was  always  self- 
possessed,  had  expressed  herself  so  prettily,  that 
Katherine,  touched  to  the  heart,  had  whispered  in 
her  ear  a  great  and  wonderful  confidence. 

"  Winny,"  she  had  said,  as  they  stood,  at  parting,  in 
the  closely  shaded  parlor  with  their  arms  about  each 
other,  girl  fashion, — "I  want  to  tell  you  something." 

"What  is  it,  Katherine? "  Winny  asked,  seized  with 
a  sudden  awesome  presentiment  that  her  friend  had 
had  a  nocturnal  visit  from  the  new-made  ghost. 
"Tell  me  what  it  is." 

And  Katherine 's  voice  grew  deep  and  solemn  as 
she  said:  "Winny,  my  father  loved  me, — dearly, 
dearly." 

"Why,  of  course!"  the  little  girl  replied,  with  ill- 
concealed  disappointment.  "Why,  of  course!" 

"Yes,  of  course,  in  the  way  fathers  have  to  love 
their  children;  but  Winny,  I  know  from  what  he 
said, — and  did, — yesterday  afternoon,  when  we  were 
driving  together, — I  know  that  he  loved  me  very, 
very  dearly;  more  dearly  than  I  had  ever  dreamed 
of." 

Winny  murmured  again, — "Of  course," — and 
Katherine  felt  a  little  chill  of  disappointment. 

"I  only  thought  I  would  tell  you,  Winny,"  she 


A  Vision  of  the  Night  1 1 1 

said,  "because  you  are  my  best  friend,  and  I  thought, 
— well,  I  thought  I  would  tell  you." 

"  I  'm  so  glad  you  did,"  said  Winny,  with  the  gentle 
rustle  of  finespun  fabrics  which  was  like  a  special 
emanation  from  her  dainty  little  mind  and  person. 
"I  'm  ever  so  glad,  and  I  am  sure  he  must  have 
loved  you,  because  you  were  so  fond  of  him.  I 
always  thought  your  father  was  such  a  handsome 
man,"  she  added,  imagining  that  the  same  encomiums 
which  had  delighted  her  friend  in  happier  days  might 
be  acceptable  in  the  hour  of  her  tribulation.  Nor 
was  she  wrong  in  her  surmise.  The  word  of  praise 
for  her  father  was  sweet  to  Katherine,  and  she  bade 
her  friend  good-by  with  only  the  faintest  sense  of 
disappointment  in  her  visit. 

Yes,  her  father  was  a  handsome  man,  and  noble 
and  generous  as  well  ;  and,  yes, — she  should  always 
have  him,  though  he  had  gone  on  a  longer  journey 
than  the  fanciful  one  she  had  jested  about.  And 
even  while  the  child  summoned  all  her  fortitude  to 
meet  the  returning  pain,  she  experienced  the  inevi- 
table surrender  to  a  power  stronger  than  her  young 
will  and  spirit,  and  hurrying  to  her  chamber,  she 
abandoned  herself  to  her  desolation. 

On  the  following  night  the  little  girl  had  gone  to 
an  early  bed  so  utterly  exhausted  that  she  had  fallen 
immediately  asleep.  After  several  hours  of  pro- 
found slumber  she  awoke  with  that  shock  of  return- 
ing consciousness  which  strikes  the  heart  when  a 
grief  is  yet  new  and  the  mind  unadjusted  to  it.  She 
did  not  sleep  again;  for  a  long  time  she  lay  there, 
with  eyes  wide  open  in  the  dark,  thinking, — thinking; 
her  young  soul  entering  all  too  early  into  the  pre- 
cious poignant  heritage  of  love  and  sorrow  which  is 


1 1 2  Katharine  Day 

reserved  for  each  of  us  according  to  the  measure  of  his 
strength. 

And  gradually  her  thoughts  resolved  themselves 
into  a  strong  desire  to  see  her  father's  face,  that  was 
so  soon  to  be  hidden  from  her  sight.  Why  should 
she  not  go  to  him  now,  when  there  was  none  to  molest 
her?  Why  should  he  not  be  all  her  own  for  one  last 
hour?  It  was  but  a  step  to  his  door, — just  a  step, 
through  the  silent  house.  And  presently  she  was 
stealing,  with  fast-beating  heart,  along  the  deserted 
passageway,  past  Elmira's  closed  door,  and  Archie's 
which  stood  open,  to  the  great  south  chamber  which 
had  been  her  father's  and  where  he  lay  sleeping  to- 
night as  on  so  many  nights  before. 

As  the  child  passed  the  head  of  the  stairs,  two  deep, 
vibrating  strokes  from  the  old  clock  followed  one 
another  with  slow  deliberation,  startling  the  echoes  of 
the  empty  halls.  Would  not  that  deep  tone  wake 
every  sleeper  in  the  house,  and  send  all  feet  in  the 
direction  whither  her  own  steps  were  bent?  She 
listened,  breathless;  but  the  silence  closed  in  about 
her  like  a  protecting  mantle,  and  again  she  moved  for- 
ward. She  could  see  a  faint  light  through  the 
empty  keyhole  of  her  father's  room;  there  had  been 
no  key  to  that  chamber  door  since  Katherine  could 
remember.  With  a  thrill  of  mingled  awe  and  longing 
she  turned  the  handle,  very  gently,  and,  as  the  door 
yielded  noiselessly  to  her  hand,  she  passed  across  the 
threshold.  At  the  sight  that  met  her  eyes  her  heart 
stood  still. 

The  light  was  burning  dimly,  showing  the  shrouded 
form  upon  the  broad,  low  bed ;  the  face  lay  exposed 
on  the  pillow,  its  mere  physical  beauty  touched  with 
that  ultimate  seal  of  nobility  which  it  is  often  reserved 


A  Vision  of  the  Night  113 

for  kindly  death  to  bestow.  This  it  was  that  the 
child  had  longed  to  see,  that  had  drawn  the  little 
white  feet  along  the  dark,  deserted,  echoing  halls. 
But  that  other  figure?  What  was  that? 

Some  one  was  kneeling  beside  the  couch,  a  tall, 
slender  form  in  a  light  wrapper,  the  hands  clasped 
across  the  shrouded  feet,  the  face  pressed  upon  them, 
absolutely  motionless. 

As  Katherine  stood  there,  bound  hand  and  foot  in 
an  incredulous  wonder,  one  deep,  silent  sob  shook  the 
kneeling  figure,  but  there  was  no  further  movement. 

And  the  child's  brain,  that  had  been  arrested  for  a 
moment,  began  to  work, — swiftly,  surely,  as  the  brain 
will  work  when  the  blood  has  paused  but  for  a  stronger 
start.  She  was  all  interest,  all  intelligence.  What  did 
it  mean?  Was  Cousin  Elmira  so  tender  hearted,  that 
she  could  suffer  like  that  ?  There  was  no  mistaking  the 
suffering ;  it  was  in  every  line  of  the  body  flung  down 
there  in  the  abandonment  of  grief;  it  was  in  the  bent 
head  from  which  the  long,  thin,  dishevelled  braids 
hung  in  unaccustomed  negligence. 

Another  deep,  silent  sob  shook  the  tall  form.  Had 
she  been  so  fond  of  her  cousin,  though  she  had  never 
betrayed  it  ?  Was  she  fond  of  them  all  ? — perhaps  even 
a  little  fond  of  Katherine,  only  that  it  was  not  in  her 
nature  to  admit  it  ?  Poor  Cousin  Elmira !  Who  would 
have  thought  it  of  her? 

The  child,  standing  there  barefooted  in  her  white 
night-dress,  her  own  hair  tossed  and  tangled,  her  own 
eyes  weary  with  weeping,  gazed  long  upon  the  prostrate 
figure.  And  gradually  a  strange  sense  of  something 
deeper,  more  desolating  than  her  own  sorrow  was 
borne  in  upon  her.  Surely  there  was  a  bitterness  in 
the  woman's  grief  that  the  child  knew  nothing  of. 

8 


114  Katherine  Day 

That  bowed  head  had  not  found  rest;  those  terrible, 
silent  sobs  brought  no  comfort.  Ah!  how  they  had 
all  misunderstood  her !  How  she  must  have  loved  him 
that  she  should  suffer  so!  How — 

A  swift  instinct,  scarcely  defined  enough  to  be  called 
a  thought,  caught  the  child's  breath,  and  slowly  the 
color  deepened  over  cheek  and  brow  and  neck. 

The  figure  there  by  the  bed  had  not  stirred  again; 
yet  so  commanding  was  its  hold  upon  the  attention, 
and  yet  so  imperative  was  the  need  of  turning  away 
from  it,  that  the  child  did  so  without  once  glancing  at 
the  beautiful  dead  face  she  had  come  to  see.  Softly, 
softly,  she  stepped  across  the  threshold,  softly  she 
pulled  the  chamber  door  to.  Oppressed  with  a 
strange  hush  of  feeling,  in  which  all  the  surging  emo- 
tions of  the  last  few  days  were  stilled,  she  stole  back, 
past  the  door  of  Elmira's  empty  room,  to  her  own  bed. 
And  there  she  buried  her  face  in  her  pillow  in  sudden 
shame  of  the  unwitting  intrusion. 

When  morning  came,  Katherine  tried  to  banish  the 
memory  of  that  vision  of  the  night  beyond  the  reach 
of  her  own  thoughts ;  but  she  only  succeeded  in  en- 
shrining it  as  a  sacred  thing  in  the  deepest  recesses  of 
her  consciousness.  And  if,  for  her  cousin's  sake,  she 
shrank  from  dwelling  upon  the  revelation  she  had  ex- 
perienced, yet  in  the  mystic  and  tragic  light  of  it,  her 
own  sorrow  came  to  seem  a  bearable  thing,  because  of 
the  precious  assurances  it  comprehended.  She  longed, 
out  of  the  plenitude  of  her  own  consolations,  to  pour 
balm  upon  those  more  cruel  wounds  from  which  an- 
other suffered;  and  when,  before  many  hours  had 
passed,  an  opportunity  of  kindly  service  offered,  the 
young  girl  was  quick  to  seize  upon  it. 

It  happened  that  Grandmother  Day  and  her  wid- 


A  Vision  of  the  Night  115 

owed  daughter,  Mrs.  Bliss,  drove  over  that  morning  to 
discuss  with  Elmira  the  details  of  the  funeral  solem- 
nities. They  were  sitting  together,  the  three  women, 
in  the  shaded  parlor,  when  Katherine  slipped  in  and 
took  a  seat  in  the  window.  Grandmother  Day  looked 
up  in  momentary  surprise,  but,  whatever  her  attitude 
might  have  been  on  a  different  occasion,  it  would 
scarcely  have  comported  with  her  sense  of  propriety 
actually  to  exclude  a  chief  mourner  from  any  one  of 
the  melancholy  functions  attaching  to  the  situation. 

"Yes,"  she  was  saying,  in  the  measured  tones  be- 
fitting the  occasion, — and  through  which  no  hint  of  a 
heart-breaking  sorrow  was  permitted  to  penetrate, — 
"Charles  had  a  great  many  friends,  and  we  must  be 
prepared  for  a  large  attendance  to-morrow.  Indeed, 
considering  how  many  of  his  classmates  and  club 
friends  will  wish  to  pay  respect  to  his  memory,  it 
seems  almost  a  pity  that  the  service  could  not  have 
been  held  in  the  church.  But  of  course  that  would  be 
out  of  the  question,  in  view  of  his  expressed  prefer- 
ence." 

"Of  course,"  Aunt  Fanny  agreed,  as  she  furtively 
dried  her  eyes  on  a  black-bordered  handkerchief,  "I 
remember  he  would  not  hear  to  having  father's  funeral 
at  church,  though  he  knew  that  we  should  not  be  able 
to  seat  all  the  people." 

"  Cha-rles  had  the  reserve  of  a  fine  nature,"  Mrs.  Day 
rejoined,  with  a  melancholy  maternal  pride;  "and  in 
sorrow,  especially,  he  was  retiring.  He  used  to  say 
that  there  was  not  much  privacy  left  us  nowadays,  but 
he  did  think  a  man  might  be  allowed  to  shed  his  tears 
in  his  own  house. — However, ' '  the  old  lady  went  on, 
with  a  certain  self-defensive  briskness — for  that  bit  of 
reminiscence  had  proved  an  unexpected  strain  upon 


n6  Katherine  Day 

her  composure — "we  really  must  begin  to  think  of  our 
list  for  the  carriages.  I  have  arranged  for  the  family 
connections,  but  after  that  it  's  not  quite  so  simple, 
and  I  shall  want  your  help." 

As  the  reader  glanced  over  the  top  of  her  spectacles 
from  one  to  the  other  of  her  three  listeners,  Kather- 
ine's  intent  little  face  turned  toward  her.  Up  to  this 
time  the  child  had  been  closely  watching  her  cousin's 
profile,  as  she  sat,  with  hands  folded  upon  her  knees, 
gazing  straight  before  her.  Elmira  did  not  look  up,  at 
the  reading  of  the  list,  nor  did  her  face  betray  any 
special  interest;  yet  at  the  first  words,  Katherine's 
heart  gave  an  indignant  leap. 

"  First  carriage,"  Mrs.  Day  was  saying;  "Archibald 
Day,  Katherine  Day,  Mrs.  John  Day,  and  Mrs.  Bliss. 
Second  carriage,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  David  Hollis,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Theodore  Glynn.  Third  carriage,  Mrs.  John 
Hayden,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Henry  Faxon,  Miss  Elmira 
Faxon.  Fourth  carriage,  Mr.  and  Mrs. — " 

' '  Grandmother ! ' ' 

A  small  figure  had  come  noiselessly  to  her  side,  and 
a  small  hand  was  laid  upon  her  arm. 

"  What  is  it,  Katherine? " 

"Grandmother, — I  think  Archie  and  I  would  rather 
go  in  the  carriage  with  Cousin  Elmira." 

"With  Cousin  Elmira?"  Mrs.  Day  repeated  in  great 
surprise.  "But  you  and  Archie  must  go  in  the  first 
carriage." 

Elmira  had  not  stirred,  but  something  in  her  face 
gave  the  little  girl  courage  to  persist. 

"I  don't  think  that  is  so  important,"  she  said,  in 
her  clear,  decided  treble,  "as  that  father's  own  family 
should  be  together." 

The  mistress  of  ceremonies  hesitated  an  instant. 


A  Vision  of  the  Night  117 

She  could  not  well  discuss  Elmira's  claims  then  and 
there,  nor  could  she,  in  that  presence,  ignore  the 
child's  suggestion.  She  glanced  questioningly  at  her 
kinswoman, — perhaps  she  herself  would  express  a  reas- 
suring indifference  on  the  subject.  But  no;  those 
thin  lips  were  as  unspeaking  as  the  countenance  they 
refused  to  interpret,  and  Mrs.  Day  found  herself 
obliged  to  take  the  initiative. 

"What  is  your  view,  Elmira?"  she  asked,  fixing 
that  inexpressive  face  with  a  questioning  glance  that 
was  not  to  be  evaded. 

"  It  is  not  for  me  to  say,"  Miss  Faxon  replied,  with  a 
somewhat  distant  manner.  "But" — yielding  to  a 
consuming  desire  for  the  dignity  she  knew  to  be  im- 
plied,— touched  also,  even  in  that  first  moment,  to  a 
feeling  of  gratitude  toward  her  little  champion, — "I 
should  like  to  have  the  children  with  me, — after  all 
these  years." 

The  conflict  in  Grandmother  Day's  mind  was  sharp 
but  short.  She  was  not  accustomed  to  having  her 
decisions  reversed,  and  she  had  a  strong  sense  of  the 
superior  claims  of  "own  sister"  when  compared  to  a 
mere  cousin.  Yet— perhaps  Katherine  was  right.  At 
least  the  child  outranked  her  grandmother  on  this  oc- 
casion; there  was  no  doubt  of  that.  And  if  Elmira 
wanted  it, — after  all  these  years? 

"Very  well,"  she  said,  not  unkindly,  "then  you 
shall  take  Fanny's  place  with  me  and  the  children,  and 
-  I  don't  know  but  what  you  're  entitled  to  it, 
Elmira." 

That  evening,  when  Katherine  had  been  in  bed  only 
a  few  minutes,  she  beheld  a  tall  figure  standing  at  her 
door.  It  was  years  since  Cousin  Elmira  had  come 
to  tuck  her  up  for  the  night,  and  she  was  quite 


u8  Katharine   Day 

awestruck  at  the  sight.  The  tall  figure  moved  across 
the  room  and  stood  beside  the  bed. 

"  I  'm  awake,"  the  child  whispered.  "  Did  you  want 
anything,  Cousin  Elmira?" 

"No,"  was  the  answer,  spoken  with  evident  embar- 
rassment. "Oh,  no!  I  only  came  to  see  that  all  was 
well  with  you." 

"  I  wish  you  would  sit  down  on  the  side  of  the  bed,1' 
Katherine  begged,  with  a  great  attempt  at  self-control. 
"It  would  seem  so  good  to  have  you  there! "-—  and  as 
Cousin  Elmira  took  the  seat,  it  seemed  to  her,  also, 
good  to  be  there. 

"I  mustn't  stay,"  she  protested,  "because  you 
ought  to  be  asleep." 

"  Oh,  the  night  's  long  enough,"  the  child  answered, 
lifting  a  small  hand,  and  shyly  touching  the  sleeve  of 
Elmira's  black  dress. 

"Yes,  the  nights  are  long  enough,"  Elmira  echoed 
sadly.  "But  you  are  young,  and  you  need  all  the 
hours  to  sleep  in;  so,  good-night!"  and,  bending  her 
head,  the  unaccustomed  visitor  touched  cold  lips  to 
the  child's  forehead. 

At  that  slight  caress  all  Katherine 's  shyness  van- 
ished. Flinging  her  arms  about  the  bended  neck — 
"O  Cousin  Elmira!"  she  cried,  "we  must  love  each 
other  dearly — for  his  sake ! ' '  and  big  sobs  shook  the 
little  form  while  warm,  quick  tears  wet  the  young 
cheek. 

Then  Cousin  Elmira  essayed,  awkwardly  enough,  to 
comfort  the  child,  and,  while  slow,  painful  tears  made 
their  way  at  last  to  her  own  tired  eyes,  she  it  was  who 
found  consolation. 


CHAPTER  X 

A  CAPITULATION 

"  Art  thou  the  tree  that  props  the  plant, 
Or  the  climbing  plant  that  seeks  the  tree- 
Canst  thou  help  us,  must  we  help  thee  ?  " 

AND  so  it  came  about  that  out  of  her  bitter  sorrow 
a  strange,  unlooked-for  solace  was  vouchsafed 
our  little  girl ;  that  out  of  a  loss  which  seemed  to  her 
immeasurable  grew  a  gain  which  meant  nothing  less 
than  a  readjustment  of  her  daily  life  to  happier  issues. 
For  that  visit  of  mutual  consolation,  matter  of 
course  as  it  would  have  been  to  most  fellow  mourners, 
was  understood  by  both  of  these  to  have  a  very  sol- 
emn and  enduring  significance.  If  neither  Elmira  nor 
Katherine  was  ever  to  allude  to  it,  it  is  also  true  that 
neither  of  them  was  of  a  nature  to  forget  it,  or  to  be 
faithless  to  a  pact  thus  deliberately  entered  upon. 

And  indeed  had  there  been  no  such  moment,  preg- 
nant of  conciliation,  some  change  must  surely  have 
been  wrought  in  their  relation  by  the  accident  of 
Katherine 's  midnight  discovery.  No  imaginative 
young  girl  could  have  witnessed  unmoved  the  silent, 
overwhelming  grief  of  a  self-contained  woman  for  the 
being  dearest  to  herself,  nor  could  any  generous  soul 
have  outlived  the  impression  born  of  that  experience, 
have  failed  to  be  touched  by  it  to  a  new  comprehen- 


I2O  Katherine  Day 

sion,  a  lasting  tenderness,  toward  her  who  knelt  there 
in  unconscious  self -betrayal. 

And  this  influence  would  have  been  potent  with 
Katherine,  even  if  the  tyrant  of  her  childhood  had 
persisted  in  the  harsh  treatment  of  her  which  she  had 
so  long  maintained.  But  a  curious  change  had  been 
wrought  in  Elmira's  attitude  of  mind, —  curious  not 
so  much  in  its  character  as  in  its  cause.  For  hers  was 
not  a  disposition  to  be  softened  by  adversity,  and  in- 
deed her  heart  had  been  heretofore  so  little  engaged 
in  her  relation  with  Katherine  that  the  child  would 
not  have  been  like  to  profit  by  any  chastening  it 
might  undergo.  Yet  if  Charles  Day  alone  of  all  her 
little  world  could  have  gained  a  hold  upon  his  cousin 
through  a  direct  appeal  to  her  affections,  there  re- 
mained one  vulnerable  quarter  in  her  carefully 
guarded  defences,  and  here  a  happy  chance  had 
permitted  Katherine  to  approach. 

Elrnira,  narrow  and  concentrated  to  the  last  degree, 
was  intensely  jealous  of  her  personal  dignity,  and  in 
the  moment  of  its  jeopardy  Katherine  it  was  who  had 
come  to  the  rescue.  But  for  Katherine,  she,  whose 
superficial  claim  was  so  clear,  whose  unavowed  rights 
were  little  short  of  paramount, — she,  Elmira  Faxon, 
would  have  been  relegated  to  a  third  carriage  in  that 
funeral  procession  which  had,  for  her,  the  significance 
of  a  great,  rank-establishing  function.  And  if  she 
came  to  the  little  girl's  bedside  that  evening  to  give 
and  receive  consolation,  the  simple  act  was  a  tacit, 
but  well-considered,  admission  that  henceforth  these 
two  were  to  be  friends  and  allies. 

Yet  it  is  doubtful  whether  Elmira  herself  realized 
all  she  had  conceded,  until  a  chance  utterance  of  her 
own  revealed  to  her  how  complete  was  her  surrender. 


A  Capitulation  121 

It  was  only  a  few  weeks  after  the  funeral  that  Mrs. 
William  Henderson,  whom  we  have  known  as  Susan 
Littlefield,  the  dispenser  of  unlimited  sponge-cake  to 
youthful  cormorants,  came  to  see  her  old  friend  and 
to  urge  upon  her  a  plan  which  would  once  have  coin- 
cided with  Elmira's  own  preferences. 

Susan,  as  happy  wife  and  mother,  was,  at  this  pe- 
riod of  her  life,  joyfully  exercising  toward  husband 
and  children  the  same  cheerful  indulgence  which  had 
once  been  squandered  upon  the  miscellaneous  bene- 
ficiaries of  a  Sunday-school  picnic.  To-day  she  had 
been  commissioned  by  her  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  John 
Littlefield,  to  execute  a  stroke  of  recruiting  work  for 
the  flourishing  boarding-school  which  was  rapidly 
transforming  the  two  "little  Fields," — as  Archie  had 
flippantly  dubbed  his  old  playmates — into  small 
women  of  the  world.  Mrs.  Henderson,  now  the  de- 
voted mother  of  twin  daughters,  was  perhaps  the  less 
averse  to  her  mission  because  these  incomparable 
young  persons,  having  but  just  attained  their  third 
year,  did  not  yet  present  themselves  to  their  mother's 
mind  as  possible  candidates  for  like  educational  ad- 
vantages. 

She  found  Miss  Faxon  at  her  accustomed  needle 
work,  looking  a  thought  paler,  in  her  scrupulously 
correct  mourning,  but  otherwise  unchanged  by  the 
harrowing  events  of  the  past  weeks.  The  two  women 
had  met  before  since  that  mourning  had  been  as- 
sumed, and  Susan  was  consequently  free  to  enter  upon 
her  subject  untrammelled  by  the  formalities  of  con- 
dolence. 

"  How  tall  Katherine  is  getting  to  be,"  she  remarked 
as  the  young  girl,  passing  out  of  the  gate  and  up  the 
street,  opportunely  crossed  her  line  of  vision.  "Is  it 


122  Katherine  Day 

only  because  she  is  wearing  her  dresses  longer,  or  is 
she  really  shooting  up  ? " 

"  I  should  say  she  had  grown  nearly  two  inches  this 
last  year,"  Elmira  replied,  giving  a  casual  glance  at 
the  departing  figure,  that  showed  slim  and  black 
against  the  white  roadway. 

"I  should  think  she  was  almost  as  tall  as  John's 
Hattie,  and  she  must  be  a  year  younger." 

"Hattie  was  always  small  for  her  years,"  was  the 
non-committal  reply. 

"Yes,  I  don't  know  but  that  she  is,  although  she  has 
developed  very  fast  in  everything  but  height  since 
she  went  to  Peachgrove  Priory.  We  did  n't  have  such 
schools  as  that  in  our  day ;  did  we,  Elmira? " 

"Perhaps  not;  but  as  I  never  went  to  boarding- 
school  myself,  I  'm  not  much  of  a  judge."  Elmira's 
conversation  was  always  open  to  the  imputation  of 
dry  ness. 

"  My  sister  says  she  never  saw  two  girls  improve  so 
in  her  life  as  Susie  and  Hattie,"  continued  Susan, 
bravely  pursuing  her  theme  in  the  face  of  discourage- 
ment. "  She  means  to  keep  them  both  there  till  they 
are  eighteen." 

"I  should  think  it  was  a  very  good  plan,"  Elmira 
answered,  with  the  ready  acquiescence  of  indiffer- 
ence. 

Clearly  the  subject  regarded  in  the  abstract  failed 
to  interest  her,  and  Susan,  considering  that  she  had 
given  the  rather  irksome  exercise  of  diplomacy  a  fair 
chance,  felt  herself  at  liberty  to  speak  out, — always 
the  most  natural  course  with  her. 

"  Harriet  has  been  thinking,"  she  said,  "how  pleas- 
ant it  would  be  if  one  or  two  others  of  our  nice  Cam- 
wood girls  could  go  to  the  Priory  next  year.  She  has 


A  Capitulation  123 

been  talking  with  Mrs.  Gerald  about  it,  and  I  should  n't 
wonder  if  they  sent  Winny." 

"Really?" 

"  What  should  you  say  to  letting  Katherine  go? " 

"Katherine?"  Elmira  repeated,  looking  as  much 
estranged  as  if  no  such  plan  had  ever  occurred  to  her. 
"  Katherine?  I  should  n't  think  of  such  a  thing! " 

"Why  not?  Should  n't  you  consider  it  an  advan- 
tage for  her?" 

"  No,  I  should  not.  She  is  doing  extremely  well  at 
Miss  Hancock's, — she  has  always  been  a  good  scholar, 
and  I  don't  want  her  to  be  pushed  too  hard  in  her 
studies." 

"  I  don't  think  they  force  the  girls  at  the  Priory.  It 
is  more  their  general  development  that  Harriet  thinks 
of." 

"I  don't  consider  that  there  is  any  hurry  about 
that,"  Elmira  declared.  "The  child  is  only  fourteen, 
and  she  has  been  through  so  much  that  she  is  already 
beginning  to  seem  old  for  her  years.  She  took  me 
driving  yesterday,  and  I  was  quite  shocked  at  her 
seriousness.  It  was  like  talking  with  a  woman  of  my 
own  age." 

"  Do  you  let  that  child  drive  you  with  old  Chief?" 
cried  Susan,  startled  into  a  change  of  subject.  "I 
thought  he  was  the  fastest  horse  in  town." 

"And  so  he  is;  but  Katherine  is  one  of  the  best 
whips  in  town,  and  Chief  is  just  like  a  person  with 
her."  Elmira  knew  she  was  quoting  Charles,  a  thing 
she  took  a  poignant  satisfaction  in  doing,  though  it 
would  have  cost  her  dear  to  speak  his  name.  "No, 
no,"  she  repeated,  emphatically, — "I  couldn't  send 
her  away  from  home.  She  is  far  better  off  here." 

"Well,"  Susan  remarked,  half  an  hour  later,  as  she 


124  Katherine  Day 

rose  to  take  her  departure;  "Harriet  will  be  disap- 
pointed, and  Mrs.  Gerald  too.  But  I  suppose  it 
would  be  hardly  fair  for  them  to  try  and  get  Mrs.  Day 
on  their  side." 

"  I  don't  know  how  fair  it  would  be,  but  it  would  n't 
do  any  harm,"  Elmira  replied,  with  quiet  assurance. 
"  Mrs.  Day  never  could  abide  a  boarding-school." 

Now,  if  Susan  had  been  vaguely  surprised  at  the 
warmth  of  her  friend's  refusal,  aware  as  she  was  of 
the  strained  relations  which  had  so  long  existed  be- 
tween Elmira  and  her  young  charge,  it  was  the  for- 
mer's parting  words  which  gave  concrete  shape  to  her 
amazement.  For,  just  as  the  visitor  crossed  the 
threshold  of  the  sitting-room  door,  and,  turning,  ex- 
tended her  hand  in  final  leave-taking,  Elmira,  moved 
by  a  sudden,  unaccountable  impulse,  exclaimed: 
"The  truth  is,  Susan,  I  can't  spare  Katherine." 

Her  own  words  struck  upon  her  heart  with  the 
mysterious  significance  of  an  echo,  and,  as  the  door 
closed  behind  her  departing  guest,  Elmira  turned 
and  passed  slowly  up  the  broad  staircase. 

"I  can't  spare  Katherine,"  she  repeated,  under  her 
breath; — "I  can't  spare  Katherine!"  and  as  she 
paused  at  the  foot  of  the  tall  clock,  with  her  hand  on 
the  mahogany  balustrade,  her  lips  mutely  forming 
the  last  words  she  had  ever  heard  her  cousin  speak, 
she  became  aware  that  she  had  accepted  and  assumed 
the  spirit  of  those  words  as  a  sacred  legacy. 

And  yet,  such  was  the  eccentricity  of  Elmira's 
moral  build,  so  obscure  was  the  relation  of  cause  and 
effect  in  her  mind,  that  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
she  would  have  responded  to  the  mystic  prompting 
of  that  echo,  if  her  better  nature  had  not  first  been 
touched  into  sensitiveness  by  Katherine 's  recognition 


A  Capitulation  125 

of  her  rights.  Because  Katherine  had  perceived  and 
maintained  her  ancient  enemy's  claim  to  be  counted 
among  the  chief  mourners,  she  might  now  tear  her 
clothes  and  come  late  to  her  meals  with  comparative 
impunity;  because  Elmira  had  ridden  in  the  first 
carriage  at  her  cousin's  funeral,  Katherine 's  friends 
were  occasionally  invited  to  tea;  the  purchase  of  a 
saddle  horse  for  the  use  of  the  two  children  was  advo- 
cated and  accomplished,  and,  stranger  still,  Elmira, 
as  long  as  she  lived,  never  failed  to  kiss  Katherine 
good-night.  It  was  not  the  most  enthusiastic  of 
kisses,  but  neither  could  it  be  called  perfunctory, 
and  the  child  accepted  it  only  too  gratefully  as  a  sign 
of  affection  and  good  will. 

But  as  if  to  the  end  that  our  stern  disciplinarian 
should  not  unlearn  an  art  in  which  she  had  so  long 
excelled,  her  relations  with  her  old  favorite,  Archie, 
were  undergoing  a  change, — as  indeed  was  inevitable. 
For  already,  as  his  father  would  have  put  it,  the  boy 
was  beginning  to  " feel  his  oats." 

Charles  Day's  rule,  though  an  apparently  lax  and 
intermittent  one,  had  been  singularly  efficacious,  and 
the  children  had  early  learned  the  lesson  of  obedience. 
If  Archie,  beguiled  by  the  indulgence  which  he  en- 
joyed at  the  hands  of  most  persons  in  authority,  had 
occasionally  ventured  to  defy  his  father's  commands, 
the  severity  of  his  punishment  had  been  such  as  to 
create  in  him  that  wholesome  awe  of  consequences 
which  was  as  near  an  approach  to  conscience  as  had 
yet  been  developed  in  his  somewhat  unstable  char- 
acter. He  had  been  fond  of  his  father, — indeed,  who 
was  not  fond  of  Charles  Day? — and  he  had  heartily 
grieved  for  the  loss  of  him.  Yet  scarcely  were  the 
first  ceremonies  of  mourning  performed  than-  he- 


126  Katherine  Day 

began  to  perceive  the  change  which  had  been  wrought 
in  his  own  position.  In  short,  to  pursue  the  line  of 
metaphor  which  Charles  himself  would  have  chosen, 
— the  boy  had,  within  a  very  few  months  after  his 
father's  death,  fairly  taken  the  bit  between  his  teeth. 

His  misdeeds  were  not  of  a  serious  nature;  they 
consisted  chiefly  in  cutting  a  recitation,  attending  a 
horse-race,  or  learning  to  smoke.  But  none  the  less 
were  they  very  disturbing  and  vexatious  to  Cousin 
Elmira,  to  say  nothing  of  the  occasional  misgivings 
they  roused  in  the  mind  of  his  small  sister.  The 
worst  of  it  was,  that  the  discovery  of  these  three  mis- 
demeanors was  simultaneous;  so  that  it  is  perhaps 
not  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  female  contingent  of 
the  family  was  momentarily  unnerved. 

One  day  in  late  September  Elmira  and  Katherine 
were  sitting  at  their  noon  dinner,  both  painfully 
conscious  of  the  empty  dinner-plate  and  unoccupied 
chair  opposite  Katherine 's,  when  Cousin  Elmira  asked 
suddenly:  "Do  you  know  what  has  become  of 
Archie  ? ' ' 

"No,"  said  Katherine;  "not  unless  he  got  kept 
after  school.  He  said  the  Latin  lesson  was  a  corker 
this  time." 

"Nonsense,  for  him  to  talk  like  that!"  Miss  Faxon 
declared,  with  that  oblivion  to  the  atrocious  slang  of 
Katherine 's  statement  which  the  most  wary  parent 
or  guardian  may  be  betrayed  into ;  ' '  Archie  is  bright 
enough  to  learn  any  lesson  they  could  set  him,  if  he 
would,  only  apply  himself. ' ' 

"Yes,  Archie  is  bright  enough,"  Katherine  felt  con- 
strained to  admit,  in  spite  of  the  unfavorable  corollary 
involved.  "We  had  a  very  hard  lesson  ourselves  this 
morning,"  she  hastened  to  add;  "I  did  n't  know 


A  Capitulation  127 

mine, — but  they  are  not  so  strict  in  a  girls'  school"; 
— all  this  with  a  view  to  diverting  criticism  to  a  safer 
channel. 

But  the  little  ruse  was  not  successful,  as  Elmira's 
next  observation  made  clear. 

"  Katherine,"  she  asked,  suddenly,  when  Nora,  hav- 
ing deposited  one  of  Bridget's  savory  squash  pies 
before  Miss  Faxon,  had  closed  the  door  behind  her; — 
"  Katherine,  did  you  know  of  Archie's  playing  truant 
last  Monday  and  going  with  the  Halsey  boys  to  the 
Passall  races?" 

"Why,  no!"  Katherine  protested,  "and  I  don't 
believe  he  ever  did  such  a  thing! " 

Miss  Faxon  turned  a  searching  look  upon  the  girl. 

"Perhaps  you  did  n't  know  that  he  smoked,"  she 
said. 

"  I  did  n't  know  he  did,"  was  the  answer,  given  with 
somewhat  less  assurance. 

"  But  you  guessed  it." 

"Not  exactly.  That  is, — there  was  smoke  in  his 
clothes  one  day,  but  anybody  can  get  that  from 
other  people's  cigars.  Mine  used  to  be  full  of  it, — 
sometimes." 

Katherine  did  not  make  this  little  speech  thought- 
lessly, nor  without  sharing  the  quick  pang  of  remi- 
niscence that  crossed  her  cousin's  mind.  Yet  her 
prompt  association  of  Archie's  peccadillo  with  her 
father's  redolent  Havanas  was  more  instinctive  than 
calculating. 

"Well!"  Elmira  declared,  ignoring  Katherine 's 
point,  "Mrs.  Gerald  says  that  Mr.  Gerald  saw  him  at 
the  races  with  those  two  public-school  boys  during 
school  hours  on  Monday,  and  that  he  was  smoking 
and  swaggering." 


128  Katherine  Day 

"I  don't  believe  Archie  ever  swaggered!"  Kather- 
ine cried  hotly.  "  It  is  n't  in  him,  and — I  should  like 
to  know  what  Mr.  Gerald  was  doing  at  the  races  him- 
self!" 

"Why,  Katherine!  v/hat  a  way  to  speak!" 

"Well,  they  need  n't  say  Archie  swaggered; — now, 
need  they,  Cousin  Elmira?"  the  girl  persisted,  in- 
stinctively clinging  to  the  one  weak  point  in  the  accu- 
sation. "It  's  Mr.  Gerald  that  swaggers;  I  Ve  heard 
father  say  so ! " 

"That  's  a  very  different  thing  from  your  saying  so, 
Katherine!"  and  Elmira,  hardly  at  home  in  the 
practice  of  this  new  forbearance,  wondered  per- 
plexedly whether  she  was  not  spoiling  the  child 
after  all  the  pains  she  had  taken  with  her. 

At  this  critical  moment  the  side  door  closed  sharply, 
and  Archie  was  heard  whistling  as  he  strode,  two  steps 
at  a  time,  up  the  stairs.  There  was  a  sound  of  splash- 
ing water  and  of  much  tramping  about  in  the  upper 
regions,  and,  after  a  suspiciously  short  interval,  the  cul- 
prit appeared, with  that  damp  and  shining  aspect  which 
is  sometimes  the  result  of  too  hasty  ablutions.  Also, 
be  it  said,  with  an  air  of  eager  readiness  for  his  dinner 
which  should  have  betokened  a  clear  conscience. 

"My  goodness!"  he  exclaimed,  as  he  came  in.  "Is 
pie  passed,  already?" 

"You  had  to  stay  over  for  your  Latin,  did  n't  you? " 
Katherine  cried,  anxious  to  prove  that  this  time  at 
least  there  was  no  secret  crime  to  conceal. 

"Yes,  worse  luck  to  it!  half  the  boys  got  stuck." 

"  It  must  have  been  rather  mortifying  to  belong  to 
the  stuck  half,"  Cousin  Elmira  remarked,  with  the 
cold  sarcasm  which  had  so  often  made  Katherine 
wince.  But  Archie  was  less  sensitive. 


A  Capitulation  129 

"Oh,  any  grind  can  cram  a  dose,  if  that  's  all  he 
does!"  the  boy  declared,  with  lofty  scorn.  "You 
would  n't  want  me  to  be  like  Jim  Marcy,  I  hope.  Why, 
he  does  n't  know  a  foot-ball  from  a  pumpkin,  and  there 
isn't  a  tailor  going  that  could  make  his  clothes  fit!" 
and  with  that  the  young  philosopher  fell  upon  a  heap- 
ing plate  of  roast  beef  which  had  providentially  ap- 
peared before  him,  and  which  he  clearly  regarded  less 
as  a  welcome  diversion  than  as  an  absolute  necessity 
to  his  continued  existence ! 

"  I  can't  say  that  I  ever  thought  it  very  important 
that  a  school-boy's  clothes  should  fit,"  Elmira  con- 
tended. "But  I  don't  see  that  their  fitting  need 
interfere  with  the  action  of  the  brain." 

"  That  is  because  you  never  went  to  a  boys'  school," 
her  antagonist  pointed  out,  with  imperturbable  good 
humor. 

All  this  time  Katherine  had  been  sitting  speechless 
before  her  second  piece  of  pie,  which  had  utterly  lost 
its  savor  in  the  tension  of  her  feelings.  And  the  sym- 
pathetic reader  will  hardly  note  unmoved  that  this 
was  not  the  first  occasion  in  the  course  of  our  homely 
narrative  that  a  piece  of  pie  had  been  sacrificed  on  the 
altar  of  sisterly  solicitude. 

Presently  they  all  three  left  the  table  and  passed 
out  into  the  family  sitting-room,  Archie  the  only  ap- 
parently unconcerned  member  of  the  party.  There 
was  something  about  this  evident  unconcern  that  was 
peculiarly  exasperating  to  Elmira,  and,  as  the  boy 
picked  up  the  morning  paper,  turning,  with  the  unerr- 
ing instinct  of  his  kind,  to  the  sporting  column,  he 
found  the  pursuit  of  information  rudely  checked. 

"I  suppose,  Archie,"  Cousin  Elmira  remarked,  in 
her  chillest  tone,  and  seating  herself  at  some  distance 


130  Katharine  Day 

from  him, — "I  suppose  you  did  not  get  much  Latin 
at  the  Passall  races  last  week." 

Archie  was  startled,  but  he  stood  his  ground;  and 
Katherine,  on  her  way  to  the  parlor  for  her  practicing, 
stayed  her  foot  in  fearful  suspense,  as  he  answered: 
"No,  I  did  not;  but  I  flatter  myself  that  I  taught 
those  Halsey  boys  the  meaning  of  'non  est  cum-atibus 
de  swampo '  /  " 

"Then  you  were  really  there,  as  I  was  told? "  Elmira 
persisted,  ignoring  the  flippant  rejoinder. 

"Yes;  and  Bill  Delay's  Blue  Gentian  got  licked. 
That  was  how  those  boys  learned  their  Latin! " 

"  I  don't  think  their  widowed  mother  would  thank 
you  for  your  instructions." 

"People  don't  usually  get  much  thanks  for  teach- 
ing Latin,"  the  self-constituted  professor  retorted. 

How  could  they  be  so  calm?  Katherine  asked  her- 
self. 

"Come  now,  Cousin  Elmira,"  Archie  was  saying,  in 
his  most  wheedling  manner, — and  how  like  his  father 
it  was!  "Don't  you  worry  about  a  little  thing  like 
that." 

"It  's  not  a  little  thing,"  she  began,  "it  's — 

"Anyhow  it  can't  be  a  state's  prison  offence,  for 
my  father  did  it  when  he  was  a  year  younger  than  I 
am." 

"  Who  told  you  such  a  thing  as  that? " 

"Not  father,  you  may  be  sure;  but  Dr.  Littlefield. 
He  told  me  how  father  won  a  bet  off  him  their  last 
year  at  the  high  school.  It  was  on  Belle  Q.  when 
she  broke  the  record.  I  like  to  get  the  doctor  talking 
about  father,"  he  added,  with  an  accession  of  filial 
piety  that  was  not  all  assumed,  though  it  must  be 
admitted  that  it  was  opportune. 


A  Capitulation  131 

"  I  should  think  Dr.  Littlefield  would  know  better 
than  to  tell  you  such  things! "  Elmira  protested. 

"He  would,  if  he  had  any  boys;  he  'd  be  as  close- 
mouthed  as  father  was.  But  you  see  his  kids  are  all 
girls,  so  he  has  nothing  to  be  afraid  of.  But,  really, 
Cousin  Elmira, — and  you,  Katherine, — I  wish  you  'd 
get  the  old  man  to  tell  you  about  it.  He  says  father 
was  the  best  judge  of  a  horse  and  the  straightest  man 
on  a  bet  he  ever  had  dealings  with.  He  says  he 
would  n't  have  hedged  if  he  had  staked  his  bloomin' 
fortune  on  it!" 

This  somewhat  wordy  diversion  had  given  time  for 
Elmira  to  make  a  new  rally. 

"Well,  Archie,"  she  said,  "  I  suppose  we  must  take 
Dr.  Littlefield 's  word  for  this;  but  it  only  shows  what 
an  exceptional  character  your  father's  was,  that  he 
should  not  have  been  led  into  evil  courses  by  such 
early  temptations.  And  one  thing  you  know  as  well 
as  I ;  he  would  never  have  approved  of  your  doing  such 
a  thing." 

"No;  men  never  understand  boys  very  well, — when 
they  have  any,"  Archie  replied,  in  a  tone  of  thought- 
ful assent.  "Why,  father  would  n't  even  let  me 
smoke,  though  he  had  to  own  that  he  did  it  himself  at 
fifteen." 

"And  have  you  no  regard  for  your  father's  wishes  in 
these  things? "  Elmira  asked,  feeling  that  she  had  come 
to  her  last  resource. 

"Of  course  I  have!  I  never  smoked  nor  went  to 
races  while  he  was  alive.  But  I  'm  older  now,  and 
like  as  not  he  would  think  it  all  right.  Is  n't  that  so, 
Kitkat?" 

Katherine,  who  had  stood  rooted  to  the  floor 
during  this  bewildering  colloquy,  trying  to  adjust  her 


132  Katharine  Day 

ideas  to  its  changing  phases,  was  fairly  nonplussed  at 
the  unexpected  appeal.  The  more  so,  as  Cousin 
Elmira,  to  her  dismay,  repeated  the  question. 

"Tell  us  what  you  think,  Katherine,"  she  com- 
manded, in  a  quiet,  colorless  voice. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  the  girl  stammered,  with 
unaccustomed  indecision. 

"Yes,  you  do  know,  Katherine,"  Cousin  Elmira 
insisted. 

"Yes,  out  with  it,  Kitkat,  and  don't  go  back  on  all 
the  family  you  've  got! " 

At  that  thoughtless  word  of  Archie's  his  two  com- 
panions glanced  involuntarily  at  one  another,  and 
each  was  stirred  with  the  same  compunction  in  the 
other's  behalf.  Oh,  it  was  cruel,  Katherine  thought, 
and  Elmira  was  getting  the  worst  of  it!  With  an 
imploring  glance  at  Archie,  the  young  girl  deliber- 
ately ranged  herself  on  the  enemy's  side. 

"I  think,"  she  said,  moving  involuntarily  a  step 
nearer  her  cousin, — "I  think  we  ought  to  mind 
Cousin  Elmira!" 

"Pooh!"  Archie  cried,  springing  to  his  feet  and 
casting  the  paper  from  him,  sporting  column  and  all. 
"That  's  all  the  good  a  fellow  gets  out  of  a  sister!" 
and  he  was  about  to  make  a  haughty  exit,  when, 
obedient  to  a  sudden  caprice,  he  allowed  himself  to 
think  better  of  it. 

Turning  on  his  heel  and  facing  his  antagonist  and 
her  discomfited  little  ally,  he  said:  "Look  here, 
Cousin  Elmira!  I  '11  make  a  bargain  with  you!  If 
you  '11  give  me  leave  to  smoke  in  the  house,  and  no 
bones  broken  between  us,  I  '11  give  the  races  a  rest, 
. — for  a  while." 

Elmira  had  risen  to  her  feet  and  set  her  neck  in  its 


A  Capitulation  133 

proudest  curve,  tinglingly  aware  that  she  was  worsted. 
Should  she  compromise? — or  should  she  yield  only  to 
the  brute  force  of  circumstance,  which  this  tall, 
self-willed  boy  had  on  his  side?  Her  mind  worked 
swiftly;  the  delay  was  scarcely  perceptible  which 
preceded  her  capitulation,  definitively,  if  grudgingly 
given. 

"  Since  you  persist  in  smoking,"  she  said,  "  I  much 
prefer  to  have  you  do  it  openly!"  Upon  which,  with 
head  erect  and  countenance  unbending,  the  van- 
quished made  good  her  retreat  from  the  field. 

Then  Archie,  taking  prompt  advantage  of  his  vic- 
tory, drew  a  match  across  the  heel  of  his  boot, — with 
the  skill  of  a  practised  hand,  be  it  observed, — and 
proceeded  to  light  a  surprisingly  good  cigar.  As  he 
did  so,  he  remarked,  with  a  comical  grimace  for  Kath- 
erine's  benefit:  "Ain't  I  glad,  though,  that  I  've  got 
too  big  to  be  licked ! ' ' 

And  Katherine,  fascinated  by  the  familiar  process, 
and  full  of  a  small  sister's  admiration  for  a  big  brother's 
prowess,  stood  watching  him,  regardless  of  the  claims 
of  Czerny  and  the  practice  hour. 

"Well,  Kitkat?"  Archie  queried,  with  a  half-pat- 
ronizing, half-conciliatory  smile.  He  rarely  bore 
malice;  resentment  was  only  an  awkward  way  of 
keeping  alive  unpleasant  sensations, — a  thing  which 
he,  like  his  father  before  him,  instinctively  avoided. 

How  tall  and  grown-up  he  was,  and  how  like  his 
father!  Katherine  came  close  up  to  him  and,  draw- 
ing in  a  deep  breath  of  the  fragrant  aroma:  "O 
Archie ! ' '  she  cried ;  "  ho w  good  it  smells ! ' ' 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    CLOSED    DOOR 

"  My  own  hope  is,  a  sun  will  pierce 
The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched." 

LET  it  not  be  imagined  that  Miss  Faxon  deceived 
herself  as  to  the  value  of  the  contract  proposed 
by  Archie ;  she  was  perfectly  conscious  that  it  was  by 
no  means  binding  upon  him.  But  the  empty  form  of 
a  concession  is  sometimes  better  than  no  concession 
whatever,  and  she  had  been  fain  to  acquiesce  in  the 
best  terms  she  could  get. 

Elmira  could  measure  indeed  better  than  another 
the  wilfulness  of  a  character  modelled  on  Charles 
Day's  own,  and  she  knew  by  bitter  experience  her 
own  powerlessness  to  cope  with  it.  Yet  it  was  the 
very  likeness  of  the  boy  to  his  father  which  threw  her 
somewhat  off  her  guard.  For,  aware  as  she  was  that 
Charles  had  been  a  bit  wild  in  his  youth, — that,  in 
fact,  he  had  always  followed  the  impulse  of  the  mo- 
ment,— she  knew  also  the  essential  rectitude  of  those 
impulses,  and  she  was  only  too  ready  to  credit  Archie 
with  an  equally  fortunate  disposition.  After  that 
first  serious  encounter,  she  shrank  fi'om  open  inter- 
ference, and,  if  she  chafed  inwardly  at  her  own  lack 
of  authority,  her  graver  apprehensions  could  usually 
be  allayed  by  parallels  drawn  from  her  cousin's  career. 


The  Closed  Door  135 

She  did  not  live  to  verify  her  hopes  or  her  fears.  It 
was  but  a  few  years  after  Charles  Day's  death, — 
when,  however,  Elmira  might  fairly  look  upon  her 
task  as  accomplished, — that  that  much-tried,  little- 
comprehended  soul  followed,  very  willingly,  although 
with  many  wearisome  delays,  across  the  threshold  of 
the  Great  Mystery  which  her  cousin's  happier  spirit 
had  traversed  at  a  bound. 

The  doctor  gave  a  long  scientific  name  to  the  slow, 
but  physically  painless  disease  to  which  she  at  last 
succumbed;  and  his  diagnosis  was  probably  correct. 
Yet  Katherine,  in  her  heart  of  hearts,  refused  to  ac- 
cept it.  To  her  mind  there  was  never  the  least  doubt 
that  Cousin  Elmira  had  died  of  a  broken  heart. 

Katherine  was  much  with  her  cousin  during  the  last 
years  of  her  life,  and  although  Elmira  never  became 
an  acknowledged  invalid,  nor  demanded  much  per- 
sonal service,  the  young  girl  soon  acquired  the  art  of 
ministering  to  her  unacknowledged  needs.  During 
the  last  year,  especially,  the  two  were  almost  in- 
separable companions. 

Before  Katherine  was  eighteen,  the  discovery  was 
made  that  she  had  accomplished  as  much  as  was  ex- 
pected of  Miss  Hancock's  pupils,  and  that  she  might 
with  profit  devote  her  time  to  music,  the  modern 
languages,  and  such  educational  "small  deer"  as  were 
supposed  to  complete  the  equipment  of  a  young  lady 
of  the  period.  These  could  be  pursued  at  home,  and 
soon  Katherine  formed  the  habit  of  doing  her  study- 
ing in  the  sitting-room  where  Elmira  sat  at  work,  her 
needle  often  flagging,  her  face  growing  grayer  and 
sharper  day  by  day. 

It  transpired  that  Miss  Faxon  was  strong  in  her 
French  verbs,  and  that  she  liked  to  be  consulted 


136  Katharine  Day 

about  them.  She  also  began  to  take  an  interest  in 
the  music,  and  sometimes  came  into  the  parlor  and 
listened,  glad,  perhaps,  of  an  excuse  for  idleness. 
Often  they  sat  together,  sewing,  of  a  rainy  afternoon ; 
or,  when  the  weather  was  fair,  old  Chief,  grown  ven- 
erable since  his  master's  death,  would  give  them  a 
leisurely  turn  along  the  dear  country  roads  that 
Charles  Day  had  loved  so  well. 

It  was  the  easier  for  Katherine  to  become  absorbed 
in  this  companionship,  because  her  two  best  cronies, 
Archie  and  Winny,  were  absent  from  home,  the  one 
at  college  and  the  other  at  the  Priory.  But  even  had 
they  been  at  hand,  matters  would  not  have  been  very 
different.  Elmira,  in  her  growing  weakness  and  de- 
pendence, would  still  have  been  her  chief  interest. 

For  the  first  time  in  her  life  Katherine 's  nature 
found  free  play.  She  could  be  useful,  she  could  be 
important;  she  could  spend  herself  in  ministrations, 
and  to  one  whose  tragic  fate  she  and  she  alone  under- 
stood. In  the  light  of  the  romance  which  had  been 
revealed  to  her,  the  young  girl  could  interpret  many 
a  commonplace  word  and  act  of  her  cousin's  in  terms 
of  dramatic  meaning;  and  if  Elmira  never  suspected 
that  her  secret  was  shared,  she  nevertheless  greatly 
profited  by  the  sharing. 

Occasionally  Archie  brought  home  a  friend  to  pass 
the  Sunday  with  him,  and  the  quiet  house  was  sud- 
denly enlivened;  or  Winny,  at  home  on  a  vacation, 
started  a  little  whirl  of  new  interest  and  pleasure. 
Katherine,  who  had  gradually  taken  over  the  care  of 
the  household,  found  her  hands  full,  and  she  played 
her  part  with  a  will  in  all  these  pleasant  happenings. 
But  when  they  were  over  and  she  fell  back  into  the 
old  routine,  the  passing  gaieties  came  soon  to  seem 


The  Closed  Door  137 

unreal,  as  if  she  had  dreamed  them;  and  Cousin  El- 
mira, — her  faltering  step  on  the  wide  stairway,  her 
hesitating  needle,  her  thinning  features, — seemed  the 
one  vital  interest  in  life. 

"Katherine,"  Elmira  said  to  her  one  day,  as  the 
girl  closed  her  German  dictionary  with  a  bang,  and 
gave  a  cheerful  sigh  of  relief  over  a  task  accomplished, 
— "  Katherine,  you  seem  happy." 

"Happy?"  Katherine  repeated.  "Why,  of  course 
I  'm  happy!" 

"I  wonder  why";  and  Elmira,  whose  stitches  had 
been  stayed  some  minutes  since,  laid  her  work  on  the 
table. 

"  Why,  I  suppose  it  's  natural  to  be  happy,  is  n't  it? 
— that  is,  when  nothing  interferes." 

"Natural  to  you,  perhaps,"  Elmira  answered  re- 
flectively, while  her  eyes  searched  the  confident  young 
face. 

Katherine  rose  and  came  toward  her, — but  not  too 
close.  There  had  been  nothing  in  this  intimacy  of 
theirs  to  encourage  the  natural  expansiveness  of 
young  girlhood,  nor  had  Katherine  ever  attempted  to 
draw  near,  in  small  personal  ways,  to  her  cousin  in  her 
constitutional  aloofness. 

Elmira,  looking  up  at  the  girl  as  she  stood  before 
her,  found  herself  making  mental  note  of  her  attract- 
iveness. Katherine  was  not  fair,  with  her  mother's 
delicate  radiance,  nor  had  she  that  willowy  grace  of 
movement  which  was  Elmira's  solitary  charm.  But 
in  her  open,  intelligent  countenance  was  much  beauty 
of  expression,  and  she  possessed  already  a  force  and 
distinction  of  bearing  which  would  tell  in  the  years  to 
come. 

She  had  taken  a  seat  on  the  other  side  of  the  work- 


138  Katherine  Day 

table,  and,  lifting  the  cambric  ruffle  which  her  cousin 
had  been  hemming,  she  asked:  "  May  I  go  on  with  it 
for  a  while?" 

Katherine  had  not  dared  continue  the  subject;  it 
seemed  to  her  doubtful  ground  for  Cousin  Elmira  to 
tread.  But  Miss  Faxon  was  bent  on  her  own  train  of 
thought. 

"You  've  not  told  me  why  you  are  happy,"  she 
persisted. 

"Why  I  am  happy?"  the  young  girl  repeated. 
"Why,  there  are  so  many  reasons.  You  see,  in  the 
first  place,  I  do  so  enjoy  doing  all  the  things  I  do." 
Then,  with  a  glance  toward  Elmira,  whose  attitude 
in  her  unaccustomed  relinquishment  of  industry  was 
subtly  appealing, — "Don't  you  suppose  that  must 
be  owing  to  my  bringing  up? "  she  asked. 

"I  wish  I  might  think  so,"  Elmira  returned, 
quite  missing  the  audacity  of  the  suggestion.  "But 
— I  don't  know," — and  she  shook  her  head  sadly; 
adding,  with  a  curious  reminiscence,  as  much  of  mood 
as  of  thought:  "You  were  always  a  difficult  child  to 
manage,  Katherine." 

"I  haven't  a  doubt  of  it,"  Katherine  laughed. 
"And  if  you  had  spoiled  me  I  should  probably  have 
been  even  worse  than  I  was!" 

Elmira  did  not  reply  at  once.  She  sat  leaning  her 
head  against  the  high  back  of  her  chair,  idly  regarding 
the  busy  young  fingers.  It  was  always  a  pleasure 
to  watch  Katherine 's  finely  modelled  hands.  They 
were  full  of  nervous  strength,  and  the  play  of  the  fin- 
gers was  delicate  and  true.  With  all  their  beauty,  too, 
they  were  singularly  free  from  those  small  affecta- 
tions which  mar  the  action  of  so  many  a  pretty 
hand.  Presently ; 


The  Closed  Door  139 

"  It  's  getting  dark,  Katherine,"  she  said ;  "  put  your 
sewing  by.  No,  don't  light  the  gas;  it's  pleasanter 
so.  I  suppose  you  are  too  young,  though,  to  like 
the  twilight,"  she  added,  half  apologetically. 

"I  like  it  sometimes,"  said  Katherine,  obediently 
laying  her  work  aside.  "It  's  always  nice  to  talk  in." 

For  a  good  many  seconds  it  seemed  as  if  the 
twilight  as  a  conversational  opportunity  were  to  be 
wasted;  but,  after  a  little,  Elmira  spoke  again. 

"Yes,  Katherine,"  she  said  thoughtfully.  "I  did 
try  to  do  my  duty  by  you,  and  as  I  look  back  over  the 
past  I  don't  see  very  much  to  regret.  But  there  was 
one  time  that  I  was  in  the  wrong,  and  I  have  always 
meant  to  tell  you  so.  I  wonder  if  you  would  remem- 
ber about  it." 

"Try  me  and  see." 

"It  was  when  I  refused  you — "  she  hesitated, 
while  the  thin  cheek  flushed  painfully  under  cover  of 
the  darkness.  Katherine  could  not  see  the  deepening 
color,  but  she  could  hear  her  cousin's  slightly  quick- 
ened breath  as  the  latter  leaned  forward  a  bit  in  her 
chair. 

"When  you  refused  me  my  ten  cents?"  Katherine 
asked. 

The  unconscious  use  of  the  possessive  pronoun 
struck  Elmira  at  once. 

"Yes,  you  are  right.  It  was  your  ten  cents,"  she 
declared  firmly.  "  I  was  entirely  in  the  wrong,  and  I 
knew  it.  I  have  always  meant  to  ask  your  pardon." 

"  We  shall  have  to  forgive  one  another,  then,  Cousin 
Elmira,"  the  girl  answered  gently,  "for  I  remember 
that  I  was  perfectly  satanic  that  day.  Besides,"  she 
added,  bent  on  consolation,  "  you  let  me  go  to  see 
Tom  Thumb!"  and  Katherine  only  wondered  in  her 


140  Katharine   Day 

own  mind  that  the  delights  of  that  afternoon  had  not 
completely  effaced  the  memory  of  her  injury. 

Again  there  was  silence.  The  house  was  very  still; 
the  occasional  sound  of  passing  wheels  seemed  to  come 
from  a  long,  long  distance. 

At  last:  "I  have  that  ten  cents  yet,"  Elmira  said. 
"  It  was  all  ready  for  you,  that  morning, — a  little  bit 
of  paper  money.  I  never  felt  like  spending  it.  You 
'11  find  it  in  my  purse, — -some  day." 

"Dear  Cousin  Elmira!"  the  young  girl  murmured. 
She  had  rarely  ventured  on  so  demonstrative  an  ex- 
pression as  that.  Somehow  it  seemed  as  if  the  bar- 
riers were  lowering  a  bit,  and  Elmira 's  next  words, 
too,  made  nothing  of  them. 

"I  wonder,  Katherine,"  she  queried,  musingly, 
"whether  you  have  any  idea  how  I  love  to  hear  you 
say  my  name!" 

"Your  name,  Cousin  Elmira?  Why,  now,  that  's 
very  nice, — for  I  love  to  say  it!" 

' '  You  're  the  first  person  who  ever  made  it  sound 
pretty,"  Elmira  went  on;  "  I  've  disliked  it  all  my 
life." 

It  was  almost  dark,  now,  and  some  one  was  light- 
ing the  gas  in  the  hall.  The  artificial  light,  falling  in 
a  broad  path  through  the  open  doorway  across  the 
middle  of  the  room,  seemed  to  obliterate  the  last  lin- 
gering twilight,  leaving  the  two  companions  in  deeper 
shadow  than  before. 

Then  Katherine  ventured  on  a  very  daring  speech. 

"  I  think  perhaps  I  like  your  name,"  she  said,  "for 
the  same  reason  that  father  did." 

"That  your  father  did?"  Elmira  asked,  her  tone 
hardening,  rather  than  softening,  as  it  always  did 
when  she  was  adjusting  her  defensive  armor. 


The  Closed  Door  141 

"Yes,  for  I  am  sure  he  liked  it,  from  something  he 
once  said," — and  Katherine  hurried  on,  without 
pause,  that  Elmira  need  not  be  forced  to  speak  again. 
"  It  was  ever  so  long  ago,  and  I  was  wondering  what  to 
name  my  new  doll  that  Aunt  Sarah  had  brought  home 
from  Europe.  I  said  the  name  must  be  appropriate, 
and  father  said  names  became  appropriate  from  per- 
sons being  called  by  them." 

"Well?"  Elmira  interjected,  in  low  staccato. 

"  He  said  Anne  meant  to  him  a  pretty  woman  with 
blue  eyes  and  fair  hair,  and  that  Katherine  meant 
rather  a  roley-poley,  excitable  little  tomboy,  and — " 

"Well?" 

"  Then  Archie  asked, — what  did  Elmira  mean  ?  And 
father  said  that  Elmira  meant  a  tall  and  very  graceful 
person  with  a  good  accent.  Don't  you  think  that 
showed  that  he  liked  the  name? " 

"  Perhaps  so,"  came  the  answer,  in  a  voice  grown  so 
suddenly  matter-of-fact,  that  Katherine  felt  sure  that 
the  speaker  had  been  touched.  The  young  girl  knew 
that  she  had  never  before  drawn  so  near  to  Cousin 
Elmira  and  she  was  gratefully  aware  that  there  had 
been  healing  in  her  words. 

For  many  days  after  that  strange,  intimate  talk  in 
the  twilight,  Katherine  felt  that  her  cousin  must  be 
near  her  end.  She  used  sometimes  to  get  up  in  the 
middle  of  the  night  and  go  and  listen  at  Elmira's  door, 
apprehensive  of  a  sudden  seizure.  Once  her  presenti- 
ment was  so  strong  that  she  pushed  the  door  open  and 
looked  in,  only  to  be  reassured  by  the  quiet  breathing 
in  the  darkest  corner  of  the  room  where  the  bed  stood. 
But  months  went  by,  during  which  the  invalid  did  not 
lose  ground  perceptibly. 

At  last,  one  gray  autumn  morning,  Elmira  did  not 


142  Katherine  Day 

come  down  to  breakfast,  and  Katherine,  going  to  her 
door,  found  it,  contrary  to  custom,  locked. 

Had  the  reticent,  solitary  soul  known  that  her  sum- 
mons was  at  hand,  and  had  she  deliberately  chosen  to 
meet  it  alone  ?  Or  was  it  only  an  accident  that  the  key 
had  been  turned  ?  None  was  ever  to  know.  The  quiet 
form  lying  there  in  the  great  square  bed  kept  its  own 
counsel,  in  small  matters  as  in  great,  and,  in  face  of  the 
eternal  mystery  into  which  the  familiar  companion  of 
all  her  life  had  entered,  Katherine  grew  to  feel  how  im- 
perfectly she  could  interpret  even  that  which  had  been 
revealed  to  her. 

She  truly  loved  Cousin  Elmira,  and  she  felt  her 
loss,  as  we  feel  the  loss  of  those  whom  we  have 
served  and  tended.  And  when,  a  few  days  later,  a 
funeral  procession  again  moved  from  Charles  Day's 
house, — a  funeral  procession  in  which  there  was  none 
to  dispute  Elmira's  right  to  the  very  first  place  of  all, — 
the  one  among  all  the  mourners  whose  heart  was 
stricken  with  a  genuine,  personal  sorrow  was  the  one 
among  them  all  who  had  once  suffered  grievous  things 
at  her  hands. 

To  those  troublous  times  long  past  we  may  be  sure 
that  Katherine  gave  no  thought  that  day;  indeed 
there  was  no  room  for  any  other  feeling  in  her  heart 
beside  the  deep,  reverent  tenderness  in  which  was 
henceforth  wrapped  about  the  very  name  of  her  old 
enemy. 


PART   II 

1  Oh,  the  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is! 

And  the  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away! 
How  a  sound  shall  quicken  content  to  bliss, 

Or  a  breath  suspend  the  blood's  best  play, 
And  life  be  a  prooi  oV  this  !  " 


CHAPTER  I 

A    YOUNG    IDEALIST 

"  I  will  pass  by,  and  see  their  happiness, 
And  envy  none  —  being  just  as  great,  no  doubt, 
Useful  to  men,  and  dear  to  God,  as  they  !  " 

WHEN  Katherine  Day  returned  from  Europe, 
whither  she  and  Winny  had  gone  under  the 
pilotage  of  the  younger  Miss  Hancock  shortly  after 
Cousin  Elmira's  death,  she  found  her  small  old  world 
curiously  bewildering.  It  was  late  October,  and  she, 
with  Archie,  who  had  been  of  their  party  that  sum- 
mer, went  immediately  to  their  grandmother's  house, 
where  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  whether  the  famil- 
iarity of  the  old  environment  or  the  unfamiliarity  of 
her  own  position  in  it  struck  Katherine  more  forcibly. 
Here  was  the  old  family  house,  throning  on  terraced 
ground  well  back  from  the  road,  with  the  reddening 
woodbine  on  the  rear  veranda  and  the  yellowing  rose- 
vines  in  front.  Within,  not  a  carpet  in  the  spa- 
cious rooms  had  been  changed,  not  a  piece  of 
upholstery  renewed,  during  the  two  years'  absence 
which  had  seemed  so  long  and  important  a  period. 
The  same  tall  pier-glasses  above  their  low  marble 
slabs  faced  one  another  in  the  long  parlor  with  their 
endless  reiteration  of  identical  images ;  the  same  por- 
traits and  landscapes  hung  on  the  walls,  the  very  same 
plants  nourished  in  the  dining-room  windows. 


146  Katharine  Day 

Nor  had  the  dramatis  persona  of  the  pleasant'i} 
homely  stage  undergone  more  change  than  the  scene 
itself.  Grandmother  Day  in  her  black  silk  dress  and 
delicate  white  muslin  "bosom"  looked  not  a  minute 
older;  Aunt  Fanny,  the  widow,  was  still  indulging 
in  a  persistent  mourning  alleviated  only  by  the  pe- 
rusal of  very  much  the  same  dull  volumes  which  had 
occupied  her  attention  from  time  immemorial,  and 
which  she  was  fond  of  reading  aloud  as  often  as  she 
could  entrap  a  listener.  Even  the  old  servants  were 
still  in  charge  of  kitchen  and  chambers,  while  the 
great  Apostle's  humble  namesake,  Peter,  gave  the  im- 
pression of  being  as  ready  for  a  sober-minded  jig  on 
the  floor  of  the  stable  as  ever  he  was. 

But  amid  these  familiar  surroundings,  so  well  cal- 
culated to  make  her  feel  like  a  child  again,  Katherine 
found  herself  suddenly  promoted  to  an  almost  equal 
footing  with  the  redoubtable  Olympians  of  a  few  years 
ago ;  and  this  state  of  things  it  was  which  sometimes 
confused  her  mind. 

Grandmother  Day  had  never  been  abroad  herself. 
She  had  been  on  the  point  of  going,  with  her  husband, 
when  his  untimely  death  intervened;  and  although 
she  would  not  have  owned  to  so  romantic  a  sense  of 
loyalty,  yet  the  truth  was  that  she  had  never  had  the 
heart  for  this  supreme  indulgence  since  it  had  been 
denied  him.  She  entertained  a  vast  respect,  how- 
ever, for  those  who  had  enjoyed  that  privilege,  and  in 
the  travelled  Katherine,  slender  as  was  her  equipment 
in  point  of  years,  her  grandmother  recognized  an 
advantage  which  she  herself  did  not  possess. 

"  I  suppose  the  French  cooking  is  really  a  good  deal 
better  than  ours,"  Mrs.  Day  opined,  speaking  from 
behind  the  big  silver  breakfast  urn,  the  first  Sunday 


A  Young  Idealist  147 

after  the  home-coming  of  her  grandchildren;  and  it 
is  doubtful  whether  the  old  lady  was  as  much  gratified 
as  she  ought  to  have  been  by  Katherine's  assurance 
that  no  French  ckef  ever  conceived  a  dish  equal  to 
old  Hannah's  fishballs. 

"  Did  you  visit  the  Conciergerie  when  you  were  in 
Paris?"  inquired  Aunt  Fanny,  who,  under  the  stim- 
ulus of  her  marriage  to  a  bookish  invalid,  had  achieved 
Carlyle's  French  Revolution,  thereby  rendering  herself 
forever  thrall  to  the  memory  of  the  unhappy  Marie 
Antoinette. 

Indeed  they  did,  Katherine  assured  her,  eagerly 
ready  to  give  a  minute  description  of  those  chill 
vaults. 

"It  must  have  seemed  peopled  with  ghosts," — and 
Aunt  Fanny  shuddered  at  the  mere  thought  of  the 
scenes  that  had  so  wrought  themselves  into  her 
shrinking  imagination.  Whereupon  Archie,  perceiv- 
ing that  the  conversation  was  about  to  broaden  out 
into  general  topics,  beat  an  apologetic  retreat. 

"Not  with  ghosts,  perhaps,"  the  young  girl  replied, 
mischievously.  "  It  was  something  worse  than  ghosts 
that  we  encountered  there." 

"Rats,  perhaps,"  Grandmother  Day  suggested, 
with  an  answering  twinkle. 

"Worse  than  rats,"  was  the  laughing  reply.  "It 
was  nothing  short  of  a  preposterous  Herr  von  Wap- 
penkoppenstein,  who  fell  in  love  with  Winny  and  me 
on  the  steamer  going  over." 

" Not  in  love  with  you  both,"  Mrs.  Day  interposed; 
indeed  so  trifling  a  tone  on  a  serious  subject  would 
hardly  have  escaped  censure  two  years  ago, — but 
then  it  would  hardly  have  been  ventured  upon. 

"  Yes, — desperately  in  love  with  us  both,"  Katherine 


148  Katherine  Day 

repeated,  quick  to  avail  herself  of  a  latitude  of 
speech  as  new  as  it  was  agreeable.  "  He  found  it  so 
difficult  to  choose  between  us,  that  he  was  driven  to 
consulting  Miss  Hancock, — as  to  our  respective  for- 
tunes ! ' ' 

"  I  hope  Amelia  Hancock  had  the  good  sense  to  send 
him  about  his  business!" 

"  But  you  see  she  did  not  understand  his  drift!  He 
was  really  very  clever  about  it,  and  when  he  had 
elicited  the  information  he  wanted, — namely,  that 
Winny  had  nothing  in  her  own  right, — he  at  once 
concluded  that  he  preferred  straight  brown  hair  to  a 
golden  fluff,  and  plain  features  to  pretty  ones!" 

"Katherine!"  Aunt  Fanny  remonstrated,  letting 
her  buttered  toast  drop  into  her  plate.  But  Grand- 
mother Day  was  inclined  to  condone  the  amazing 
flippancy  of  the  tale,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  its  unmis- 
takably foreign  flavor. 

"And  did  he  really  make  you  an  offer?"  she  asked. 

"  Oh,  yes;  and  I  was  so  flattered  at  being  preferred 
to  Winny  that  I  was  near  accepting  him  on  the  spot, — 
him  and  his  dreadful  little  Schloss  in  Baden,  that  he 
showed  us  a  picture  of,  and  his  inordinate  taste  for 
travel,  and  his  wheezy  flute  that  he  played  at  the  con- 
cert for  the  sailors'  box." 

"It  must  have  been  dreadfully  embarrassing  to 
meet  him  again  in  Paris,"  Aunt  Fanny  surmised. 
Fortunately  for  this  tender-hearted  bookworm  she, 
having  accepted  her  very  first  offer,  had  herself  been 
spared  the  nightmare  of  rejected  suitors. 

"  Oh,  no ;  not  a  bit !  He  introduced  us  to  his  new  wife 
and  told  me  in  a  stage  aside  that  she  was  the  ideal  he 
had  so  long  sought  in  vain.  And  before  the  concierge 
arrived,  with  his  keys  and  his  clatter,  Herr  von  Wap- 


A  Young  Idealist  149 

penkoppenstein  had  got  it  out  of  Miss  Hancock  that 
Winny  was  already  Braut,  while  I  was  not, — which 
caused  him  to  treat  me  with  such  pitying  considera- 
tion that  I  was  half  inclined  to  believe  that  I  had  made 
the  mistake  of  a  lifetime.  Fancy  how  amiable  he 
must  have  been!" 

"That  was,  of  course,  on  your  second  visit  to  Paris, 
since  it  was  after  the  engagement,"  Mrs.  Day  ob- 
served. She  was  thinking  to  herself  that  this  grand- 
daughter of  hers,  with  her  fine,  spirited  face  and  her 
ready  tongue,  was  a  girl  after  her  own  heart. 

"Yes;  you  know  it  was  in  Paris  that  it  all  came 
about," — and,  at  the  memory  of  this  great  happiness 
Katherine  fell  suddenly  serious.  The  engagement  of 
Winny  and  Archie  meant  almost  as  much  to  her  as  to 
the  lovers  themselves,  and  she  could  not  yet  think 
of  it  without  emotion. 

That  her  grandmother,  however,  took  no  such 
exalted  view  of  this  sudden  infatuation  on  the  part 
of  two  immature  young  persons,  was  clear  from  the 
promptness  with  which  she  struck  the  practical  key. 

"I  only  hope,"  she  remarked,  drily,  as  she  replen- 
ished her  own  coffee  cup,  "that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gerald 
will  have  the  good  judgment  to  let  those  children  wait 
until  Archie  has  made  up  his  mind  how  he  proposes  to 
support  a  family." 

"Oh,  I  am  sure  Archie  will  soon  settle  down  into 
some  regular  occupation,"  was  Katherine's  confident 
reply ;  "  though  of  course  it  's  not  as  if  he  had  n't  an  in- 
dependent income  to  begin  with." 

"Independent  fiddlesticks!"  Mrs.  Day  retorted, 
with  unusual  tartness.  "And  how  long  do  you  sup- 
pose his  famous  income  will  last  if  he  has  nothing  to  do 
but  spend  it?" 


150  Katherine  Day 

« 

"  Oh, Grandmother !  I  don't  believe  Archie  would  live 
beyond  his  income.  He  may  be  a  little  extravagant 
now,  but  I  don't  think  he  's  quite  accountable.  It's 
only  that  he  can  think  of  nothing  but  pleasing 
Winny." 

"  And  can't  he  please  Winny  without  spending  hun- 
dreds of  dollars  on  an  engagement-ring?" 

Katherine 's  face  fell;  she  too  had  had  her  misgivings 
about  that  ring,  the  more  disquieting  because  of  the 
pride  and  explicitness  with  which  Winny  herself  had 
named  the  exact  sum  expended. 

"  I  'm  afraid,"  she  admitted  reluctantly,  "that  they 
neither  of  them  quite  realize  the  value  of  money. 
They  have  always  had  what  they  wanted  without  any 
effort." 

"  Well,  the  sooner  they  learn  to  realize  it  the  better 
for  all  concerned,"  Grandmother  Day  declared,  with 
an  asperity  which  betokened  a  curious  lack  of  sym- 
pathy in  this  apparently  unexceptionable  love-affair. 
'  They  are  certainly  unfitted,  both  of  them,  for  the 
serious  responsibilities  of  life"; — with  which  final  dic- 
tum the  speaker  left  her  seat,  thus  putting  an  end  to 
the  discussion. 

And  Katherine  went  to  the  piano, — her  father's 
piano,  which  had  been  brought  over  from  the  old 
house, — and  played  herself  into  tune  again  before 
church-time.  She  was  not  much  of  a  musician,  at 
least  according  to  the  strenuous  standard  of  to-day, 
but  she  loved  her  Beethoven  and  her  Chopin,  and  she 
thought  more  of  what  they  had  to  say  to  her  than  of 
her  own  performance.  And,  as  she  played,  she  let  her 
thoughts  wander  in  the  happy  paths  of  this  delightful 
romance,  unhindered  by  any  misgivings  such  as  her 
grandmother's  tone  would  surely  have  awakened,  had 


A  Young  Idealist  151 

she  been  more  familiar  with  the  workings  of  that  clear 
and  well-balanced  mind. 

Archie,  after  his  graduation  the  previous  June,  had 
joined  the  travellers  in  Switzerland.  He  had  come 
over,  in  fact,  with  a  view  to  spending  a  year  or  two  at 
the  Beaux  Arts,  having  recently  adopted  the  theory 
that  he  was  to  become  an  architect.  This  was  the 
third  profession  the  young  man  had  fixed  his  choice 
upon  in  as  many  years,  and  it  would  be  vain  to  deny 
that  the  prospect  of  seeing  life  in  Paris  had  played  a 
decisive  part  in  his  light-minded  deliberations.  But 
scarcely  had  he  spent  a  week  in  the  society  of  his  old 
playmate, — there  among  the  mighty  Alps,  where  each 
flower  blooms  with  a  more  vivid  hue,  each  brook- 
let rushes  with  a  more  impetuous  dash  and  sparkle, 
than  in  the  lowland, —  when  he  discovered  that 
he  had  mistaken  his  vocation;  that  he  had,  in  short, 
been  created,  not  for  law,  not  for  journalism,  nor  yet 
for  architecture,  but  simply  and  solely  to  the  end  that 
he  should  acquire  the  bewitching,  exasperating  young 
beauty  whose  name  was  Winny  Gerald,  as  his  own 
inalienable  possession. 

To  Katherine  the  romance  that  unfolded  itself  in 
face  of  the  shining  Jungfrau  was  pure  poetry;  in  the 
sudden  passion  of  Archie  as  in  the  maidenly  coyness  of 
Winny  she  found  no  flaw,  and,  from  the  first,  she 
watched  its  budding  and  its  blossoming  with  a  happy 
faith  that  the  ideal  fitness  of  it  must  ensure  a  prosper- 
ous outcome. 

For  Katherine  was  an  idealist,  as  one  need  but  to 
listen  to  her  playing  to  discover.  She  never  struck  a 
false  note,  to  be  sure,  but  how  then  did  she  get  over  the 
difficult  passages?  One  meant  to  listen  critically, — 
now  was  the  chance  with  all  those  double  thirds  of 


152  Katherine  Day 

Chopin's,  which  were  manifestly  beyond  her  grasp. 
But,— what  a  touching,  moving  melody  that  was,  and 
how  she  made  it  sing!  And  the  harmony!  What  a 
lovely  change  of  key !  And  now,  how  all  the  compli- 
cations resolved  themselves  back  into, —  why!  they 
were  past,  the  difficulties  were  past,  and  how  had 
those  imperfectly  trained  fingers  avoided  all  offence? 

Yes,  Katherine  was  an  idealist;  she  had  the  gift 
of  seizing  the  higher  significance,  the  gift  of  oblivion  to 
the  lower. 

There  had  been  much  in  the  circumstances  of  her 
life  to  encourage  this  tendency.  In  nearly  all  of  those 
with  whom  she  had  hitherto  been  brought  into  close 
contact  there  had  existed  something  to  stimulate  the 
imagination,  to  beguile  the  judgment.  Her  father, 
her  brother,  and  her  nearest  friend,  had  one  and  all 
been  possessed  of  unusual  personal  charm,  a  thing 
to  which  she  was  constitutionally  susceptible.  And 
whatever  of  disillusionment  the  future  might  hold  in 
store  for  her,  one,  at  least,  of  the  three  had  passed  be- 
yond its  reach.  Her  filial  piety  was  never  to  suffer  a 
chill;  her  father's  memory  was  as  safe  from  earthly 
blemish  as  her  dreams  of  the  unremembered  young 
mother  whom  she  still  unconsciously  classed  with  the 
spotless  angels  of  a  far-away  heaven.  And  even  Cousin 
Elmira,  whose  seamy  side  the  child  had  such  bitter 
knowledge  of,  stood  glorified  and  interpreted  to  her 
later  understanding  in  the  light  of  a  great  love  and  a 
great  denial.  Yes,  Katherine  was  an  idealist,  and  her 
idealism  had  always  found  much  to  sustain  it. 

Both  children, — for  children  they  both  were, — had 
taken  her  into  their  confidence  during  those  weeks  of 
courtship,  quite  as  if  she  had  been  their  elder;  where- 
as, as  a  matter  of  fact,  even  Winny  had  lived  a  few 


A  Young  Idealist  153 

months  longer  than  Katherine.  Miss  Hancock,  deeply 
interested  in  her  guide-books,  had  been  amusingly 
oblivious  to  that  which  was  going  on  directly  under 
her  powerful  eye-glasses.  If,  indeed,  any  feature  of 
the  situation  caught  her  attention,  it  was  the  eager- 
ness with  which  both  Archie  and  Winny  seemed  to 
cultivate  Katherine 's  society.  At  last,  however, 
there  came  a  time  when  confidences  ceased,  when 
Katherine  was  unceremoniously  relegated  to  the  com- 
panionship of  the  chaperone,  with  whom  she  found 
herself  constrained  to  improve  her  mind  at  a  quite  as- 
tonishing rate.  This  was  during  the  first  week  in 
Paris,  and  by  the  time  the  enthusiastic  Miss  Hancock 
had  exhausted  her  resources  in  an  effort  to  persuade 
her  quondam  pupil  that  the  Henris  and  the  Philippes, 
the  Marguerites  and  the  Dianes  of  other  days  super- 
seded all  contemporary  interests,  there  came  a  con- 
fession before  which  bygone  battles  and  intrigues 
promptly  vanished  into  the  limbo  reserved  for  them. 

"Well,  Katherine,"  Winny  remarked,  one  memo- 
rable rainy  morning,  as  the  two  girls  sat  together  at 
their  weekly  mending,  Archie  having  been  dispatched 
to  the  Theatre  Franfais  in  search  of  tickets, — "Well, 
Katherine!" 

Winny  spoke  the  words  in  her  smallest  voice,  which 
was  a  very  small  voice  indeed,  and  which  at  once 
threw  Katherine  into  a  disproportionate  tumult  of 
joyful  suspense.  Regardless  of  the  critical  point  at 
which  her  darning  had  arrived,  she  hastily  extricated 
her  hand  from  Archie's  sock  and  waited  for  more. 

"Why  don't  you  ask  any  questions?"  Winny  de- 
manded, taking  refuge  in  the  pretty  petulance  which 
was  so  becoming  to  her. 

"I  think  I  don't  need  to,"  Katherine  answered, 


154  Katherine  Day 

coming  over  to  Winny  's  window  and  dropping  on  her 
knees  beside  the  girl.  "You  know  how  glad  I  am," 
she  whispered ;  ' '  you  know  that ;  don 't  you,  Winny  ? ' ' 
— and  that  was  the  manner  in  which  the  great  news 
was  broken. 

"  Oh,  you  funny  old  Katherine! "  Winny  exclaimed, 
looking  down  into  her  new  sister's  face,  which  was 
quite  transfigured  with  feeling;  "I  should  think  it 
was  you  that  were  engaged ! ' ' 

"Oh,  that  could  n't  possibly  be  so  wonderful  and 
beautiful,"  Katherine  declared  with  conviction. 

"Why  not?" 

"Well,  because  I  am  only  I,  and  you, — why  you  are 
Winny  and  Archie  both;  don't  you  see?  So  every- 
thing is  doubled!" 

Winny  continued  her  study  of  Katherine's  counten- 
ance, and  a  singular  expression  came  into  her  own. 

"  Do  you  know,  Katherine,"  she  said,  giving  a  spec- 
ulative tilt  to  her  pretty  head,  "if  Archie  had  been 
like  you,  I  don't  believe  I  should  ever  have  accepted 
him." 

"Of  course  you  wouldn't!  —  because  then  he 
would  n't  have  been  Archie." 

"No;  that  's  not  what  I  mean.  I  was  only  think- 
ing,"— and  the  child  actually  blushed  a  little, — "I 
was  only  thinking  that  I  should  have  been  afraid  of 
him, — he  would  have  expected  so  much." 

"And  Archie?   does  n't  he  expect — so  much?" 

"No;  Archie  is  ready  to  take  things  just  as  they 
are." 

"And  don't  you  suppose  I  should  take  things  as 
they  are?" 

"Not  in  the  same  way;  you  would  always  be  ex- 
pecting more  of  me  than  I  could  live  up  to," 


A  Young  Idealist  155 

Katherine  shook  her  head,  unconvinced. 

"Archie  is  dreadfully  in  love  with  me,  of  course," 
Winny  continued,  with  a  little  self-conscious  smile; 
"but  he  would  n't  be  if  I, — well,  if  I  squinted.  It  's 
my  eyes  and  my  nose  and  my  chin  he  's  in  love  with ; 
— he  as  much  as  told  me  so." 

"And  you,  Winny; — what  are  you  in  love  with?" 

"Oh,  that  would  be  telling,"  the  child  retorted, 
with  an  irresistible  little  grimace;  and  Katherine 
loved  her  the  better  for  keeping  her  own  counsel. 

Presently,  in  deference  perhaps  to  that  reserve 
which  seemed  to  her  so  charming,  Katherine  got  up 
from  her  knees  and  went  to  the  window,  where  she 
stood  watching  for  Archie.  Whereupon  Winny,  who 
had  followed  the  movement  with  a  certain  amused  in- 
terest,— for  Katherine 's  enthusiasms  always  seemed 
to  her  exaggerated, — asked  suddenly:  "Katherine, 
do  you  remember  the  day  we  played  on  the  piazza 
that  I  was  a  queen  and  you  were  a  gypsy? " 

"Indeed  I  do,"  Katherine  laughed;  "I  remember 
you  were  dreadfully  grasping  and  took  the  best  of 
everything." 

"And  how  fierce  you  were  when  I  told  you  you 
could  have  second  best!" 

"  Of  course  I  was !  And  there  comes  Archie !  Wave 
to  him,  Winny,  wave  to  him!" 

To-day,  only  two  months  later,  as  Katherine  sat  at 
her  father's  piano  sending  her  ringers  over  the  swelling 
arpeggios  of  the  great  Sonata  Pathetique,  the  picture 
of  Archie's  handsome,  ardent  face  looking  up  through 
the  rain  was  vividly  before  her  eyes.  She  remem- 
bered how  Winny  had  stood. up  and  waved,  and  then, 
turning  abruptly  away  from  the  window,  had  said,  in 
a  matter-of-fact  voice:  "There's  one  good  thing 


156  Katharine  Day 

about  it,  Katherine;  we  sha'  n't  have  to  quarrel  over 
princes!  There  's  nothing  now  to  prevent  your  hav- 
ing one  of  your  own ! ' ' 

Suddenly  the  solemn  admonitory  tone  of  church- 
bells  struck  across  the  flying  arpeggios,  and  simul- 
taneously came  Grandmother  Day's  voice  at  the 
parlor  door  asking:  "Are  you  nearly  ready  for  church, 
Katherine?" 

"Nearly  ready,  Grandmother,"  and  Katherine 
sprang  to  her  feet  and  ran  up  to  her  room,  laughing 
softly  over  the  guilty  start  she  had  given  at  the  sud- 
den interruption  of  her  meditations. 

"As  if  princes  were  so  plenty  as  all  that!"  she 
scoffed,  under  her  breath,  as  she  put  on  her  hat  before 
the  mirror. 

It  was  a  charming  hat,  and  extremely  becoming, 
and  there  was  really  very  little  fault  to  be  found  with 
the  appearance  of  the  young  person  whose  eyes  met 
hers  in  the  glass.  But  Katherine  was  still  under  the 
spell  of  curly  hair  and  blue  eyes,  and  it  was  with  any- 
thing but  self-satisfaction  that  she  turned  away  from 
the  glass  and  passed  sedately  down  the  stairs,  singing,, 
with  much  conviction,  a  little  German  song,  the  bur- 
den of  which  was  a  request  that  the  mother  of  the 
songstress  should  not  waste  her  time  in  sewing  upon 
a  red  Sarafan.  Katherine  had  not  the  remotest  idea 
what  a  red  Sarafan  might  be,  although  she  assumed 
that  it  was  something  extremely  decorative ;  and  Mrs. 
Day,  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  listening  to  the  pretty 
lyric, — the  words  of  which  were  quite  unintelligible  to 
her, — was  not  inspired  to  reply  with  the  classic  Mut- 
terlein  in  the  song  that  youth  would  come  but  once 
and  the  child  had  better  make  the  most  of  it. 

What  she  did  say  was:   "That  's  a  very  becoming 


A  Young  Idealist  157 

hat  you  have  on,  Katherine!" — perhaps  as  satisfac- 
tory a  form  of  encouragement  as  the  more  senti- 
mental admonition  of  the  song.  And  it  would  be 
unfair  to  assume  that  any  thought  of  princes  lent 
warmth  to  the  grateful  enthusiasm  with  which  the 
young  girl  cried : 

"Oh,   Grandmother!  what   a  lovely   compliment! 
It  's  the  very  first  one  you  ever  made  me!" 


CHAPTER  II 

OBSTACLES 

"  Greed  and  strife, 

Hatred  and  cark  and  care,  what  place  have  they 
In  yon  blue  liberality  of  heaven  ?  " 

THAT  Mrs.  Day's  concern  regarding  a  hasty  mar- 
riage on  the  part  of  her  grandson  was  gratui- 
tous, she  herself  would  have  been  the  first  to  recognize, 
had  she  been  in  possession  of  certain  facts  which  had 
recently  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  young  lady's 
father.  For  that  same  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Ger- 
ald's character  which  had  led  her  to  fear  that  he  might 
be  hasty  in  marrying  his  daughter  to  Archie's  very 
respectable  fortune  would  then  have  reassured  her, 
in  that  particular  at  least,  although  at  the  price  of  a 
more  serious  cause  of  anxiety.  Grandmother  Day 
was  very  well  aware  that  this  neighbor  of  hers,  whom 
she  had  known,  boy  and  man,  all  his  life,  had  an  inor- 
dinate respect  for  money;  she  was  even  discriminat- 
ing enough  to  perceive  that  he  esteemed  it  not  for  its 
own  sake,  but  for  that  which  it  would  buy. 

Horace  Gerald  was,  in  fact,  anything  but  miserly 
in  his  disposition;  not  hoarding,  but  love  of  display, 
was  his  foible,  and  he  had  been  rather  ostentatiously 
gratified  by  the  prospect  of  a  rich  son-in-law.  The 
chill  to  his  pride  had  been  the  more  severe,  when,  by 


Obstacles  159 

the  merest  chance,  he  had  learned  that  the  young  man 
had  already,  while  at  college,  begun  to  live  beyond 
his  income.  The  information  had  come  to  him, — by 
accident,  as  has  been  stated,  but  from  an  entirely 
trustworthy  source, — only  a  few  days  before  the  arrival 
of  the  travellers.  He  did  not  confide  his  unpleasant 
discovery  even  to  his  wife, —  an  amiable,  inexact- 
ing  woman,  with  a  positive  genius  for  meek  acquies- 
cence. He  merely  informed  her  that,  for  reasons  best 
known  to  himself,  he  had  decided  to  postpone  his 
daughter's  marriage,  and  Mrs.  Gerald,  though  loath 
to  give  up  the  June  wedding,  did  her  best  to  believe 
that  the  young  people  would  be  none  the  worse  for 
waiting  a  year. 

"It  is  no  more  than  we  had  to  do  ourselves,  Hor- 
ace," she  remarked,  pulling  a  slightly  withered  blos- 
som off  the  rose-geranium  in  the  sunny  sitting-room 
window.  She  was  sorry  to  see  her  flowers  fade,  but 
she  had  no  lingering  tenderness  for  them  when  the 
process  had  once  begun. 

Mr.  Gerald,  less  grateful  than  he  should  have  been 
for  a  docility  with  which  custom  had  made  him  un- 
appreciatively  familiar,  answered  somewhat  testily: 
"  I  fail  to  see  that  the  two  cases  are  at  all  parallel,  my 
dear";  upon  which  his  wife,  finding  no  more  candi- 
dates for  rejection  among  the  geranium-blossoms, 
proceeded  to  tend  and  water  with  much  care  that 
portion  of  her  small  horticultural  exhibit  which  had 
had  the  good  judgment  to  resist  decay. 

It  was  a  pleasant  picture  that  she  made  among  her 
flowers,  for  this  mother  of  a  family  had  herself  pre- 
served much  of  the  flower-like  beauty  which  her 
daughter  Winny  had  inherited.  Here  was  the  same 
order  of  hair  and  eyes  and  complexion  whose  orthodox 


160  Katherine  Day 

prettiness  held  Katherine 's  imagination  captive;  here, 
somewhat  modified  by  the  hand  of  time,  but  still  rec- 
ognizable, was  the  same  delicacy  of  contour  and 
piquancy  of  line  which  had  been  the  despair  of  Archie 
during  the  few  weeks  of  uncertainty  that  had  seemed 
an  eternity  to  the  unchastened  ardor  of  the  boy.  If, 
indeed,  Winny  had  resembled  her  mother  as  closely 
in  moral  as  in  physical  characteristics;  in  other 
words,  if, — to  borrow  Elmira  Faxon's  audacious 
thought, — a  child  might  have  had  but  one  parent,  it 
would  have  been  safe  to  predict  a  smooth  and  super- 
ficially beneficent  career  for  the  young  beauty  on 
whom  both  Charles  Day's  children  had  so  firmly  set 
their  affections. 

Now  Mrs.  Gerald  had  probably  never,  in  the  whole 
course  of  her  life,  opposed  her  husband;  but  neither 
had  she  coerced  her  children.  So  that  when,  on  the 
morning  following  the  demise  of  the  rose-geranium 
flower,  Winny  demanded  at  her  hands  a  reason  for 
the  postponement  of  the  wedding,  this  docile  wife 
had  not  the  slightest  hesitation  in  placing  the  respon- 
sibility for  the  change  where  it  belonged. 

"I  'm  sure  I  don't  know,  Winny,"  she  declared, 
"  why  your  father  has  thought  best  to  put  off  the  wed- 
ding; but  we  must  suppose  that  he  has  good  reasons 
for  doing  so." 

They  had  been  unpacking  the  Paris  trunks,  and  it 
was  not  without  a  pang  that  Mrs.  Gerald  had  reflected 
that  a  certain  exquisite  organdy  muslin,  peculiarly 
adapted  for  a  bridal  trousseau,  would  perhaps  be  out  of 
fashion  by  another  summer. 

"It  's  not  that  I  have  any  great  objection  to  wait- 
ing," Winny  said,  coolly;  "I  don't  believe  I  shall  like 
being  married  half  as  well  as  I  like  being  engaged. 


Obstacles  161 

But  I  do  think  people  might  give  their  reasons  if 
they  have  any." 

"We  waited  two  years, — your  father  and  I,"  Mrs. 
Gerald  observed,  with  a  wistful  look  at  the  pretty 
organdy,  as  she  laid  it  to  one  side. 

"I  don't  see  any  resemblance  between  the  two 
cases!" 

The  tone  of  this  rejoinder,  no  less  than  the  words, 
would  have  convinced  the  discriminating  listener  that 
Miss  Winny's  inheritances,  like  those  of  the  rest  of  us, 
were  dual  in  their  source. 

"Why  not?"  her  mother  asked,  really  curious  to 
know  what  had  led  the  girl  to  make  her  father's  retort. 

"  Simply  that  in  your  case  the  money  was  yours,  and 
in  our  case  it  happens  to  be  Archie's!" 

Now,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  this  patent  fact  had 
quite  escaped  Mrs.  Gerald's  attention, — if,  indeed,  it 
had  not  slipped  her  memory.  Its  enunciation  gave 
her  something  of  a  shock.  Was  it  possible  that  Winny, 
— her  little  Winny,  hardly  out  of  pinafores  as  it  seemed 
to  her, — could  entertain  considerations  of  a  monetary 
nature  ?  Yes,  the  money  had  been  hers,  and  her  father 
had  perhaps  been  wise  in  testing  the  character  and 
business  ability  of  his  daughter's  suitor  before  entrust- 
ing her  and  her  little  fortune  to  his  keeping.  But  it 
is  only  fair  to  state  that  these  were  facts  to  which  Mrs. 
Gerald  never  gave  a  thought.  The  money  had  passed 
into  her  husband's  hands,  and  she  had  all  but  forgot- 
ten that  it  had  ever  belonged  to  her.  That  her  own 
daughter  should  have  been  the  one  to  remind  her 
of  it  made  her  quite  uncomfortable.  Was  this  one  of 
the  effects  of  foreign  life  ?  She  almost  wished  she  had 
kept  the  girl  at  home,  though — how  beautifully  her 
dresses  were  made  and  how  well  she  did  her  hair! 


1 62  Katherine  Day 

"Any  one  would  know  you  had  been  in  Paris,"  she 
contented  herself  with  observing;  "I  have  always 
understood  that  the  French  paid  great  attention  to 
money  considerations." 

"You  mean  when  they  are  going  to  be  married?" 
the  girl  asked  brusquely.  "Well,  I  should  say  they 
had  better!  I  don't  think  parents  have  any  right  to 
let  their  children  marry  poor." 

"That  's  because  you  happen  to  be  in  love  with  a 
rich  man,"  Mrs.  Gerald  answered  easily. 

"  But  I  should  n't  happen  to  be  in  love  with  him  if 
he  were  poor." 

"Not  with  Archie?" 

"No!" 

"But  Winny!  how  could  you  help  yourself  ?"  her 
mother  cried,  incredulous.  Mrs.  Gerald  was  beginning 
to  feel  quite  crude  and  unsophisticated  in  face  of  this 
advanced  young  person. 

"  Now,  Mamma,  there  's  no  use  in  arguing,  for  I  can 
meet  you  at  every  point.  I  have  been  practising  on 
Katherine  for  two  years." 

"  And  what  should  you  say  to  Katherine  if  she  were 
to  ask  you  how  you  could  help  being  in  love  with 
Archie?" 

"  I  should  say  what  is  quite  true,  that  I  could  have 
helped  it  perfectly  while  it  was, — well,  while  it  was 
coming  on!  Of  course  now,"  she  admitted,  hiding  her 
face  behind  the  lid  of  her  trunk,  but  not  before  her 
mother  had  caught  a  charming  little  blush  and  smile, 
"it  wouldn't  be  so  easy.  Nobody  could  ever  suit 
me  as  Archie  does." 

"  And  do  you  discuss  all  this  with  Katherine  ? ' ' 

"  Not  now,  not  since  we  are  engaged ;  she  takes  every- 
thing for  granted  now. — Katherine  is  so  unpractical." 


Obstacles  163 

"Unpractical?  Why,  Winny,  what  do  you  mean? 
She  kept  house  beautifully  for  nearly  two  years  before 
Miss  Faxon  died!" 

"Yes,  and  she  can  darn  Archie's  socks  a  great  deal 
better  than  I  could  if  I  would, — which  I  never  mean  to 
do, — but  for  all  that  she  is  unpractical." 

"Well,  Winny!"  Mrs.  Gerald  sighed,  unfolding  a 
new  and  elaborate  fichu,  the  use  of  which  in  the  scheme 
of  things  did  not  at  once  suggest  itself  to  her  mind ; 
"I  can't  say  that  I  always  understand  you  since  you 
came  home!" 

"  It's  that  fichu  that  you  don't  understand,"  Winny 
laughed,  springing  to  her  feet.  "  Here !  let  me  have  it ; 
I  '11  show  you  how  it  goes  " ;  and  as  she  deftly  tossed 
and  turned  the  dainty  film  of  lace  for  her  mother's  en- 
lightenment, she  continued,  in  the  same  good  cause: 
"All  I  mean  about  Katherine  is,  that  she  never  seems 
to  pay  attention  to  practical  things.  Now,  if  she  were 
to  marry  a  poor  man,  she  would  quite  forget  that  her 
money  had  ever  been  hers.  You  may  not  believe  it, 
Mamma,  but  such  things  do  happen!"  and  with  that 
Miss  Winny  flung  the  lace  about  her  own  pretty 
throat  and  stepped  to  the  mirror,  wherein  her  reflected 
image  gave  her  mother  such  a  playful,  child-like  smile, 
that  Mrs.  Gerald  rose  to  her  feet  much  consoled,  re- 
marking comfortably: 

" There,  Winny!  I  had  no  idea  you  were  so  fond  of 
hearing  yourself  talk ! " 

Winny,  like  the  true  artist  she  was,  never  lost  an 
opportunity  of  practising  her  art,  even  on  the  most 
unlikely  subjects.  Mother,  or  great-aunt,  or  kitch- 
en-maid might  serve  her  turn  well  enough  in  the 
absence  of  those  abnormally  impressionable  beings  of 
the  masculine  variety  whom  she  had  every  reason  to 


164  Katherine  Day 

regard  as  her  natural  prey.  Hence,  if  she  had  made 
no  attempt  to  wheedle  her  father  into  more  reasonable 
views  with  regard  to  the  postponed  wedding,  we  may 
suppose  that  she  was  quite  sincere  in  telling  her 
mother  that  she  had  no  objection  to  waiting. 

Winny  was  very  much  in  love  with  Archie  Day, — 
with  his  attractive  personality,  his  ready  wit,  and, 
above  all,  his  charming  love-making.  She  knew,  as 
she  had  declared,  that  no  one  could  have  suited  her  so 
well.  Other  men  seemed  to  her  clumsy  and  obtuse 
compared  with  Archie ;  her  experience  had  been  that 
the  more  they  cared  for  her  the  less  she  cared  for  them, 
— and  she  had  never  entertained  scruples  about  test- 
ing their  sentiments  and  her  own  to  the  bitter  end. 
But,  if  Archie  was  the  ideal  lover,  she  was  well  content 
with  him  in  that  capacity.  Indeed,  it  was  an  oft- 
recurring  misgiving  that  she  had  expressed  when  she 
told  her  mother  that  she  might  not  like  being  married 
half  as  well  as  she  liked  being  engaged.  She  had  al- 
most said  as  much  to  Archie  the  previous  evening, 
thus  throwing  him  into  what  his  grandmother  would 
have  characterized  as  "  a  state  of  mind." 

It  was  on  that  same  first  Sunday  after  their  return 
from  Europe, — the  day  when  Katherine  had  made  of 
her  Beethoven  a  melodious  commentary  upon  the 
little  idyll  of  their  love  affair, — that  Mr.  Gerald, 
strong  in  a  parental  authority  upon  which  he  ob- 
viously plumed  himself,  had  informed  Archie  that  he 
was  not  to  marry  Winny  until  he  had  proved  himself 
capable  of  earning  a  living.  The  interview  was  short 
but  decisive ;  for  Archie  was  quick  to  see  the  useless- 
ness  of  opposition, — on  his  part  at  least.  It  was  the 
first  time  since  his  father's  death  that  he  had  come 
face  to  face  with  an  impregnable  authority;  but  his 


Obstacles  165 

boyhood's  experience  stood  him  in  good  stead.  Here 
was  what  he  was  used  to  of  old, — a  curt  prohibition, 
no  reason  stated,  no  remonstrance  admitted. 

"You  seem  to  leave  my  personal  fortune  quite  out 
of  account,"  he  had  remarked,  holding  himself  well 
in  hand,  as  he  had  done  so  many  times  when  far  less 
was  at  stake. 

"Personal  fortunes  are  not  to  be  relied  upon,"  Mr. 
Gerald  condescended  to  explain.  "If  a  man  has  n't 
business  capacity  a  fortune  's  about  the  worst  handi- 
cap there  is;  and  if  a  man  has  business  capacity,  he  '11 
earn  a  living,  fortune  or  no  fortune." 

As  he  enunciated  this  high-sounding  axiom,  Hor- 
ace Gerald  was  filled  with  admiration  for  his  own  sa- 
gacity, while  Archie,  who,  with  all  his  faults,  was  of 
finer  fibre  than  his  antagonist,  felt  that  he  was  being 
bullied ;  and  he  straightway  revenged  himself  by  re- 
membering that  his  father  had  accused  this  self-im- 
portant marplot  of  swaggering. 

But  although  Archie  had  shown  plenty  of  tact  in 
his  interview  with  Mr.  Gerald,  he  was  by  no  means  as 
submissive  as  he  appeared;  and  it  was  upon  Winny's 
intervention  that  he  relied  for  the  reversal  of  an 
iniquitous  judgment. 

The  young  man  had  sternly  refused  Mrs.  Gerald's 
invitation  to  tea,  urging  his  grandmother's  claims 
upon  his  society  on  that  first  Sunday,  but  it  was  well 
understood  that  this  spasm  of  filial  devotion  would 
hardly  embrace  the  evening  in  its  reach ;  and  Winny 
had  no  hesitancy  in  opening  the  door  herself  at  the 
first  footfall  that  sounded  on  the  steps.  She  was  not 
always  so  indulgent  as  that,  but  she  realized  that  this 
was  an  occasion  when  she  could  not  be  too  kind. 

"I  thought  it  would  be  you,"  she  said,  lifting  the 


1 66  Katharine  Day 

sweetest  face  to  be  kissed;  and  Archie  could  hardly 
credit  his  good  fortune  in  being  thus  privileged  on  the 
very  threshold.  Had  his  perceptions  been  as  keen 
here  as  where  Winny's  father  was  concerned,  he  might 
have  been  somewhat  less  elated;  for  then  he  would 
have  known  how  to  interpret  such  affability. 

"Oh,  Winny!"  he  exclaimed,  under  his  breath, — 
prolonging  the  embrace  for  an  unconscionable  number 
of  seconds, — "Oh,  Winny!  they  sha'n't  bully  us; 
shall  they?" 

"  Bully  us?  Why,  what  do  you  mean?"  she  asked, 
extricating  herself  from  the  insatiable  Archie  with 
an  ease  and  grace  acquired  through  long  practice. 
"Come  into  the  parlor, — there  's  nobody  there, — and 
don't  use  bad  language." 

"Bad  language,  indeed!"  cried  the  injured  lover, 
following  the  girl  into  the  softly  lighted  room,  where 
he  promptly  selected  a  friendly  shadow  as  a  desirable 
adjunct  to  the  situation;  "if  the  language  is  bad, 
what  do  you  call  the  thing?" 

"It  's  a  thing  I  don't  know  anything  about,"  Miss 
Winny  replied,  demurely,  ignoring  the  shadowy  and 
hospitable  sofa  toward  which  Archie  seemed  disposed 
to  lead  her.  "Come!  Let  us  sit  by  the  table. 
There  's  a  better  light  here,  and — I  want  to  see  how 
you  look  when  you  are  cross ! ' ' 

"  Oh, Winny,  how  can  you  ?"  Archie  protested,  stand- 
ing helpless  beside  the  table,  since  there  was  no  room 
for  a  chair  in  Winny's  immediate  neighborhood. 

"  Please  go  and  sit  down,"  she  begged,  "or  you  will 
oblige  me  to  stand  up.  It  's  like  talking  to  an  obelisk, 
— only  we  don't  seem  to  be  in  the  Place  de  la  Con- 
corde, do  we,  dear  ? "  Wereupon  Archie  adroitly  begged 
the  question  by  dropping  upon  one  knee  before  her. 


Obstacles  167 

"You  know,  Winny,"  he  urged,  "that  it  was  there 
under  the  old  Tuileries  trees,  in  sight  of  the  obelisk, 
that  you  promised ! ' ' 

"  Promised  what? "  she  queried,  letting  him  have  one 
of  her  hands,  since  he  seemed  in  need  of  some  support. 

"  Promised  for  June." 

"Oh,  but  I  didn't  promise — really.  I  couldn't 
promise  anything  without  permission." 

"  But  you  as  good  as  got  permission  by  letter." 

"  I  know,  but  I  think  I  must  have  misunderstood 
that  letter;  for  papa  seems  very  decided." 

"But,  Winny!  you  could  persuade  him;  you  know 
you  could ! ' ' 

"And  supposing  he  should  be  in  the  right  after  all? 
He  's  a  great  deal  older  and — 

"Nonsense,  Winny!  you  know  better  than  that!" 
— and  now  he  had  both  her  hands.  "You  know 
that  we  are  neither  of  us  children  to  be  bullied, — I 
mean  dictated  to  like  that !  If  you  would  only  beg  him 
to  be  reasonable  and  if  you  would  be  sweet  to  him, — 
the  way  you  are  to  me,  sometimes, — he  never  could 
deny  you  anything.  Say  you  will,  Winny;  say  you 
will  make  him  do  as  we  like! " 

Then  Winny  frowned  perplexedly  and  very  prettily, 
and,  drawing  her  right  hand  from  the  grasp  of  Archie's 
left,  placed  it  thoughtfully  on  top  of  the  other. 

"Archie,"  she  asked,  with  the  sweetest  little  ca- 
dence,— and,  of  a  truth,  it  was  only  Archie  who  knew 
all  the  possibilities  of  sweetness  in  that  voice  and  face, 
— "Archie,  don't  you  like  being  engaged  to  me? " 

"  Like  it?"  he  cried  thoughtlessly;  "  I  could  n't  live 
another  day  without  it. " 

"  But,  Archie,  we  shall  never  be  engaged  again;  did 
you  ever  think  of  that?" 


i68  Katherine  Day 

"  Never  be  engaged  again?  Why,  what  are  you  driv- 
ing at?" 

"Only  that  when  it  comes  to  an  end — it's  over; 
when  once  we  are  married — " 

Then  began  the  state  of  mind. 

"  You  mean  to  say  that  you  would  rather  be  engaged 
than  married?"  he  cried,  ruthlessly  pulling  his  left 
hand  away  from  its  comfortable  berth  between  two 
soft  detaining  ones  and  springing  angrily  to  his  feet. 

"Oh,  you  are  cross  to-night,  Archie,"  the  girl 
lamented;  and  then,  with  a  half -petulant,  half-concili- 
atory smile:  "  I  did  n't  suppose  people  were  ever  like 
that, — when  they  were  only  engaged." 

' '  Only  engaged !  And  is  that  why  you  don 't  want  to 
be  married?  Is  it  because  you  won't  trust  me?  Per- 
haps you  think  I  'm  one  of  those  brutes  that  don't 
know  how  to  treat  a  wife !  If  that 's  your  opinion  of 
me — "  and  the  poor  boy  looked  so  aggrieved  and  dis- 
tracted that  Winny  was  seized  with  compunction. 
— From  which  it  will  be  seen  that  she  was,  indeed, 
very  much  in  love, — too  much  in  love  to  care  to  make 
him  suffer. 

She  stood  up,  and,  going  over  to  him,  where  he  had 
turned  away  to  hide  his  face,  that  was  quite  distorted 
with  painful  emotion,  she  put  her  hand  on  his  shoulder 
very  gently,  and  said:  "Please,  Archie,  don't  let  us 
have  a  lovers'  quarrel ;  they  sometimes  end  badly." 

"And  you  will  persuade  your  father?"  he  asked, 
when,  after  all,  they  were  safely  established  on  that 
shadowy  sofa. 

"  I  will  ask  him  at  any  rate,"  she  consented,  with  a 
mental  reservation  which  was  happily  unguessed  by 
him;  "but  you  must  n't  expect  very  much.  He  's  not 
easy  to  influence,  and  he  's  not  likely  to  find  his  own 


Obstacles  169 

daughter  irresistible.  Why,  even  you  get  unmanage- 
able if  I  differ  with  you." 

"Only  about  that  one  thing." 

"Yes,  but  that  's  the  very  thing, — and  it  seems  to 
be  a  dreadfully  dangerous  subject.  Do  you  think, 
Archie," — and  she  gently  touched  his  sleeve, — "do 
you  think  you  can  forgive  me  if  I  fail? " 

"I  can  forgive  you  anything,  Winny,  if  you  will 
only  say  that  you  do  really  and  truly  want  to  marry 
me, — not  just  to  be  engaged,  but  to  be  married  forever 
and  ever." 

And  looking  up  into  his  ardent,  beseeching  face,  that 
was  still  quite  sad  and  drawn  with  anxiety,  she  said 
solemnly:  "  If  I  looked  forward  to  anything  but  that, 
Archie,  I  should  be  perfectly  miserable." 

She  meant  it  too  with  all  her  heart,  and  Archie  knew 
she  meant  it,  and  he  was  supremely  happy;  for  it  was 
the  greatest  admission  she  had  ever  made. 

And  yet, — how  blind  and  deaf  are  lovers!  Not 
only  had  the  girl  not  yielded  an  inch  on  the  main 
point,  but  the  experience  of  the  evening  had  but 
confirmed  her  in  her  instinctive  feeling.  Indeed,  it 
was  the  very  next  morning,  when  she  and  her  mother 
were  drawn  into  their  little  confidential  talk  over  the 
Paris  trunks,  that  she  put  her  feeling  into  words;  and 
it  was  perhaps  not  without  a  half-resentful  reminis- 
cence of  the  unmanageableness  of  Archie,  and  of  the 
concessions,  insignificant  as  they  were,  which  had  been 
wrested  from  her,  that  she  found  herself  formulating 
the  conviction :  "  I  don't  believe  I  shall  like  being  mar- 
ried half  so  well  as  I  like  being  engaged." 


CHAPTER  III 

GARDEN     COUNSELS 

"  Old  folk  and  young  folk,  still  at  odds,  of  course  ! 
Age  quarrels  because  Spring  puts  forth  a  leaf 
While  Winter  has  a  mind  that  boughs  stay  bare." 

IN  justice  to  the  disconsolate  Archie,  it  should  at 
once  be  stated  that,  had  he  been  made  aware  of 
his  prospective  father-in-law's  reasons  for  putting  him 
on  probation,  he  would  have  felt  fairly  confident  of 
success  in  combating  them.  Furthermore,  if  such 
confidence  was  undoubtedly  due  in  large  measure  to 
a  sanguine  temperament,  it  could  hardly  be  con- 
ceived to  exist  side  by  side  with  a  very  bad  con- 
science. 

Yet  Mr.  Gerald  had  not  been  misinformed  with  re- 
gard to  that  ill-advised  encroaching  upon  his  capital 
which  the  young  man  had  been  reported  guilty  of. 
On  the  contrary,  the  facts  were  very  much  as  they  had 
been  represented,  and  they  were  in  large  measure  due 
to  regrettable  causes. 

Archie,  popular  at  college  as  elsewhere,  had  fallen 
in  with  a  fast  set  of  men, — men  much  richer  than 
himself,  and  whose  manner  of  cutting  a  dash  waked 
in  him  a  lively  spirit  of  emulation.  Especially  during 
the  last  two  years,  when  home  influences,  as  person- 
ified in  Katherine,  had  been  temporarily  eliminated, 


Garden  Counsels  171 

— and  in  his  case,  impressionable  as  he  was  to  influ- 
ence of  any  sort,  the  loss  was  a  real  one, — things  had 
come  to  a  pretty  bad  pass.  The  boy  took  to  drinking 
hard  and  playing  high,  and  if  he  never  openly  dis- 
graced himself,  it  was  only  because  his  excesses  were 
the  outcome  rather  of  a  genial  conviviality  than  of 
any  really  downright  vicious  tendency.  The  upshot 
of  it  was,  however,  that  he  presently  found  himself  in 
financial  straits,  and,  having  a  year  or  two  previous 
attained  his  majority,  he  now  took  the  most  obvious 
way  out  of  his  difficulties  by  the  simple  device  of  sell- 
ing a  bond  or  two. 

The  transaction  proved  so  easy  of  execution,  and, 
in  its  immediate  consequences,  so  entirely  innocuous, 
that  he  had  the  less  hesitation  in  repeating  it,  when, 
a  few  weeks  later,  a  more  legitimate  cause  for  expendi- 
ture presented  itself.  It  happened  that  his  attention 
had  been  called  to  the  case  of  a  struggling  sophomore 
who  was  working  his  way  through  college,  and  who  sud- 
denly found  himself  blocked  by  an  unlooked-for  family 
emergency  which  called  for  immediate  intervention. 
The  young  fellow  was  doggedly  submitting  to  the  in- 
evitable and  preparing  to  leave  college,  when  help 
reached  him  anonymously  and  his  career  was  saved. 

If  Archie  did  not  especially  pride  himself  on  this 
exercise  of  liberality, — which  was  none  the  less  credit- 
able because  it  was  known  only  to  the  man  who  acted 
as  intermediary, — it  is  also  true  that  the  incident 
really  made  only  a  transitory  impression  upon  him. 
He  had,  to  be  sure,  acted  upon  a  generous  impulse, 
and  had  performed  a  signal  service  in  behalf  of  one 
who  was  an  indifferent  stranger  to  him.  But  he  had 
done  so  at  no  immediate  inconvenience  to  himself. 
The  sale  of  another  government  bond  had  cast  him 


172  Katherine  Day 

scarcely  a  shadow  of  misgiving.  His  little  fortune, 
the  control  of  which  he  had  so  recently  acquired,  still 
seemed  to  the  boy  inexhaustible.  But,  even  had  it 
been  otherwise,  he  was  of  too  improvident  a  tempera- 
ment to  have  been  much  concerned  about  conse- 
quences. Nor  did  any  sense  of  virtue  arising  from 
this  superficially  magnanimous  act  play  an  appre- 
ciable part  in  his  self-confidence.  The  simple  fact  of 
the  matter  was  that  although  Archie  would  not  have 
been  in  a  position  to  deny  certain  damaging  allega- 
tions against  his  conduct  in  the  past,  he  was  himself 
so  heartily  convinced  that  his  wild  oats  were  once  for 
all  sown,  reaped,  and  scattered  to  the  winds,  that  it 
would  have  seemed  an  easy  task  to  bring  another  to 
the  same  point  of  view. 

In  the  general  sense  of  respectability  attendant 
upon  the  acquisition  of  his  degree, — an  achievement, 
by  the  way,  which  had  once  seemed  more  than  doubt- 
ful,— he  had  found  his  mind  invaded  with  numbers  of 
good  resolutions ;  and,  since  neither  poker  nor  punch 
again  came  in  his  way  with  quite  the  ease  and  seduc- 
tiveness attending  their  enjoyment  during  his  college 
days,  it  cost  him  little  to  renounce  them.  By  the 
time  the  young  spendthrift  had  joined  his  sister  and 
her  friends  abroad  he  had  almost  forgotten  the  mean- 
ing of  a  poker  term,  and  if,  during  the  days  of  his  court- 
ship, he  could  have  wished  that  his  record  had  been 
a  spotless  one,  he  was  none  the  less  firmly  persuaded 
that  the  sins  of  his  youth  were  a  thing  of  the  past. 

"  Winny,"  he  had  said  one  day  on  the  home  voyage, 
when  the  two  young  people  stood  at  the  stern  railing, 
behind  the  wheel-house  of  the  good  old  Mosel,  watch- 
ing the  prismatic  colors  in  the  steamer's  snowy  wake, 
"  I  wish  I  had  always  been  good  enough  for  you." 


Garden  Counsels  173 

"Nonsense,  Archie!"  Miss  Winny  had  retorted. 
"That  's  the  way  novel  heroes  talk, — reformed  repro- 
bates who  are  about  to  confess  their  past." 

"  No,  I  don't  mean  that  I  was  ever  so  bad  as  all  that, 
or  that  I  Ve  ever  done  anything  worth  confessing; 
only,  when  I  think  of  you, — which  I  am  engaged  in 
doing  pretty  much  all  the  time, — I  feel  as  if  I  should 
like—" 

"Now,  Archie,  you  need  n't  get  sentimental  about 
it," — and  Winny  gave  him  a  look  which  made  her 
words  sound  like  music, — "  I  know  perfectly  well  that 
you  are  plenty  good  enough  for  me." 

"Yes,  Winny,  I  believe  I  am  now,"  Archie  assented; 
"that  is, — as  much  so  as  any  fellow  could  be!  But 
that  's  only  since — last  summer! " 

The  conviction  with  which  the  young  man  had  made 
this  avowal  had  never  left  him.  However  he  might 
have  transgressed  in  the  past,  that  was  over  and  done 
with.  Since  last  summer  he  had  passed  beyond  the 
reach  of  temptation.  And  so  convinced  was  he  of  his 
own  complete  reform,  that  he  would  not  have  doubted 
his  ability  to  instill  into  the  mind  of  the  most  obdurate 
father-in-law  a  like  implicit  faith. 

But  Mr.  Gerald,  as  we  have  seen,  gave  him  no  such 
opportunity.  The  astute  autocrat  steadfastly  kept 
his  own  counsel,  and  with  equal  steadfastness  persisted 
in  his  determination  to  test  his  young  neighbor  before 
trusting  him.  And  the  worst  of  it  was,  to  Archie's 
thinking,  that  many  of  those  who  should  have  known 
better  were  disposed  to  range  themselves  on  the  side  of 
tyranny  as  against  the  sweet  reasonableness  of  youth- 
ful desires.  Indeed  Winny 's  father  had  probably 
never  stood  so  well  with  the  community  at  large  as  he 
did  at  this  juncture.  From  Grandmother  Day  down, 


i  74  Katherine  Day 

nearly  all  of  those  personally  interested  in  the  affair 
were  ready  to  credit  him  with  more  good  sense  than 
they  had  hitherto  supposed  him  to  possess ;  and  Archie, 
sensitive  to  a  moral  atmosphere  long  before  it  had 
distilled  into  words,  felt  cruelly  chilled  and  checked. 

As  for  Winny,  although  she  had  declared  herself  on 
his  side,  and  although  she  had  begged  her  father  very 
prettily  to  withdraw  his  opposition  to  the  June  wed- 
ding, the  disquieting  fact  remained  that  she  had  not 
succeeded,  and  it  was  hard  for  Archie  to  believe  that 
she  had  done  her  best.  Yet  whenever  he  broached  the 
subject  with  her,  he  was  sure  to  be  worsted.  Her  tac- 
tics were  extremely  simple,  and  she  never  found  it 
necessary  to  vary  them. 

"Oh,  Winny,"  he  would  protest,  "you  can't  have 
done  your  best !  Your  father  never  could  refuse  any- 
thing if  you  used  all  your  influence!" 

"But  I  do,  Archie,  indeed  I  do!" 

"  No,  Winny,  it  can't  be!  He  could  n't  resist  you  if 
you  were — like  you  are  with  me,  sometimes." 

"But,  Archie,  how  can  I  be  like  that  with  him?" 

And  the  fatuous  lover  could  never  refrain  from  ask- 
ing: "  Why  not? " — nor  did  he  ever  fail  to  be  propiti- 
ated, and  momentarily  disarmed,  by  the  self-evident 
but  none  the  less  delectable  reply : 

"Because, — oh,  Archie,  you  know  why!  because," 
and  the  sweetest  voice  in  the  world  would  drop  so  low 
that  he  was  obliged  to  draw  very  near  in  order  to  catch 
the  words:  "because  I  don't  love  him, — the  way  I 
love  you ! ' ' 

Yes,  momentarily  he  was  disarmed;  for  that  one 
delicious  hour  he  was  soothed  and  beguiled  into  some- 
thing akin  to  acquiescence.  But  afterward  the  sense 
of  injury  was  sure  to  reassert  itself,  and  then,  angry, 


Garden  Counsels  175 

baffled,  distracted,  he  would  take  refuge  in  a  sympathy 
and  loyalty  which  could  not  be  questioned ;  he  would 
go  to  Katherine. 

It  was  their  second  Sunday  at  home,  and  brother 
and  sister  were  walking  together  after  church,  up  and 
down  the  box-bordered  paths  of  Grandmother  Day's 
garden,  passing  in  and  out  of  the  grape-arbor  that 
arched  the  main  walk,  and  where  a  few  fragrant  clus- 
ters had  yet  escaped  the  harvesting  hand  of  Peter. 

"I  don't  understand  it,"  Katherine  was  saying, 
"I've  thought  it  all  over  again  and  again,  and  I  don't 
understand  it.  It  seems  perfectly  unreasonable," — 
and  she  could  have  devised  no  comfort  which  would 
have  been  so  acceptable  to  the  boy's  outraged  self- 
esteem.  Of  course  she  could  not  understand  it,  of 
course  it  was  irrational! — and  her  recognition  of  its 
unreasonableness  was  the  very  assurance  that  he 
craved. 

Archie  passed  his  arm  over  his  sister's  shoulder,  as 
he  used  long  ago  to  do  when  minded  to  be  gracious, 
and  if  there  was,  on  his  part,  a  less  patronizing  inten- 
tion than  of  old,  on  hers  was  no  least  falling  off  in  the 
affectionate  appreciation  with  which  the  big  brother's 
favors  had  always  been  received. 

They  paced  up  and  down  and  in  and  out  among  the 
garden  paths  that  crossed  and  recrossed  from  the  four 
points  of  the  compass,  and  ever  and  anon  other  pun- 
gent autumn  smells  succeeded  the  aroma  of  the  grapes : 
— here  a  whiff  of  winter  apples  ripening  in  the  sun, 
— there  the  melancholy  exhalation  of  mouldering 
leaves,  stirred  perhaps  by  the  passing  foot  that  had 
toddled  in  babyhood,  tripped  and  romped  in  child- 
hood, between  the  borders  of  box  whose  fragrance, 
mingling  in  their  earnest  talk,  did  but  deepen  the* 


176  Katherine  Day 

sense  of  lifelong  association, —  that  homeliest  and 
most  comfortable  bond  between  next  of  kin. 

They  were  a  comely  pair,  these  children  of  Charles 
Day's,  straight  and  tall  both  of  them,  and  with  other 
points  of  resemblance,  as  well.  No  one  would  have 
doubted  their  relationship,  which  was  apparent  in  a 
general  likeness  of  feature  and  in  many  a  fleeting  ex- 
pression common  to  the  two;  but  neither  would  any 
observer  worthy  the  name  have  failed  to  note  their 
fundamental  unlikeness.  It  was  not  that  Archie's 
hair  was  light  and  Katherine's  dark,  nor  that  his  com- 
plexion was  fairer  and  more  sensitively  heightened  by 
passing  emotion;  neither  was  it  that  the  boy  had 
more  of  mere  physical  beauty  than  his  sister,  and, — if 
mouth  and  chin  counted  for  anything, — somewhat 
less  of  moral  strength.  When  all  is  said,  the  dissimi- 
larity was  not  so  much  in  mould  as  in  substance — the 
kind  of  difference  that  must  increase  as  the  years  go  on. 

"Well,  dear,"  Katherine  said  at  last,  "  I  suppose  we 
can't  expect  old  people  to  see  things  as  we  do,"  and 
here  she  stayed  her  step  at  the  end  of  the  central  walk, 
just  where  an  ancient  quince  tree,  a  venerated  fa- 
miliar of  their  childhood,  spread  in  a  flat,  sprangling 
pattern  over  the  high  boundary  fence.  "If  even 
grandmother  and  Uncle  Theodore  have  had  the  same 
idea  about  it,  I  suppose  we  must  admit  that  Mr.  Ger- 
ald may  perhaps  think  himself  in  the  right," — and  she 
moved  a  step  away  that  she  might  look  into  the 
handsome,  rebellious  face  she  was  trying  to  conciliate. 

"But  even  if  we  were  to  admit  it,"  Archie  replied, 
with  more  tolerance  than  he  could  have  mustered  an 
hour  ago, — for  he  was  manifestly  refreshed  by  the  lib- 
eral draught  of  sympathy  and  confidence  that  had 
been  accorded  him, — "  I  don't  see  any  comfort  in  that." 


Garden  Counsels  177 

"Don't  you?"  Katherine  answered,  with  more 
lightness  of  tone,  and  with  a  smile  that  was  very  good 
to  see:  "  Now  I  think  there  is  some  comfort  in  having 
one's  hateful  feelings  changed.  Do  you  know,  I  am 
beginning  already  to  feel  less  vindictive  than  I  did." 

"I  suppose  there  is  something  in  that,"  Archie 
agreed.  "It's  not  altogether  pleasant  to  loathe 
people." 

"  No,  it  's  hateful  to;  that  kind  of  feeling  only  hurts 
the  person  who  has  it.  So  we  '11  give  Mr.  Gerald  the 
benefit  of  the  doubt ;  '  won't  us,  Oliver '  ? " 

"Well,  since  you  put  it  on  that  ground,"  Archie 
assented,  with  a  humorous  grimace;  "I  suppose  we 
had  better.  Only  it  's  understood  that  it  is  from 
strictly  selfish  reasons." 

"By  all  means!" — and  having  thus  made  a  grant 
of  indulgence  to  their  elders,  and  satisfactorily  settled 
the  ethics  of  their  own  sentiments,  the  two  young 
sages  resumed  their  walk,  in  somewhat  better  spirits 
for  the  little  diversion. 

"And  now  we  must  decide  what  to  do  in  case  he  's 
obdurate,"  Katherine  urged,  her  step  quickening  to 
keep  pace  with  the  energy  of  her  proposition. 

"Do?  Why  there  's  nothing  to  do  that  I  can  see," 
Archie  declared,  lagging  a  bit,  by  way  of  protest 
against  such  briskness  both  of  walk  and  speech. 
"They  've  got  it  all  in  their  own  hands." 

"  Why — but  Archie !  What  you  've  got  to  do  is  the 
most  important  thing  of  all ; — to  carry  out  the  condi- 
tions as  fast  as  ever  you  can ! ' ' 

"Hm!"  Archie  scoffed.  "That  sounds  well!  But 
how  is  a  man  going  to  earn  his  living  all  in  a  minute? " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  believe  it  will  be  necessary  to  do  more 
than  show  that  you  are  going  to  do  some  honest  work. 


178  Katherine  Day 

You  see  you  've  got  plenty  of  money  to  marry  on, 
and  if  once  Mr.  Gerald  is  convinced  " —  and  Katherine 
paused,  but  only  because  her  thoughts  had  taken 
another  turn. 

"  Well  ? " — and  again  they  stood  still,  this  time  with- 
in the  grape  arbor;  and  Katherine,  reaching  up,  pulled 
a  big  purple  globule,  and  absently  swallowed  it, — 
whereupon  Archie,  with  great  seriousness,  followed 
suit. 

"After  all,"  the  girl  said,  with  an  assurance  that 
admitted  of  no  question ;  "it  's  not  as  if  he  could  pos- 
sibly have  anything  against  you, — your  family  or 
your  character," — and  a  pair  of  dark  eyes,  as  trusting 
as  they  were  truthful,  met  Archie's,  constraining  him 
to  a  slight  deflection  from  the  point. 

"I  suppose,"  he  said,  with  half-hearted  facetious- 
ness,  "that  I  might  get  a  job  as  hostler." 

"Yes,  or  even  footman,"  Katherine  laughed.  "A 
college  graduate  might  aim  as  high  as  footman  I 
should  think.  You  know  they  sometimes  wear  gloves 
and  hand  cards!" 

"Oh,  quit  fooling,  Katherine!"  he  cried,  for  in 
truth  his  own  jest  had  been  rather  a  subterfuge  than  a 
spontaneous  sally.  "  Don't  you  see  there  's  not  an 
earthly  thing  I  can  do,  without  grubbing  years  to  get 
a  start?" 

"  No,  I  don't  see  anything  of  the  sort! "  she  declared 
stoutly;  "I  don't  believe  anybody  has  better  ability 
than  you,  or  a  fairer  chance  to  make  it  tell.  If  you 
once  make  a  beginning," — and  she  looked  up  into  his 
face  with  an  ardor  of  conviction  that  Archie  would 
have  been  the  last  to  gainsay, — "I  do  believe  you 
may  have  everything  your  own  way  by  June!" 

The  boy's  color  deepened  and  his  eyes  flashed;  in 


Garden  Counsels  179 

a  moment  his  mood  had  changed, — success  seemed 
within  his  grasp.  It  was  because  his  mind  had  over- 
leaped the  yet  uncertain  and  possibly  laborious 
means,  and  seized  upon  the  glittering  attainment  of 
his  end, — a  thing  to  which  he  was  ever  prone. 

"Oh,  Katherine!"  he  began,  and  then  his  speech 
was  arrested  by  the  sound  of  approaching  footsteps, 
and,  looking  up  and  out  from  the  shadow  of  the  vines, 
they  saw  a  stalwart  figure  striding  toward  them 
through  the  noon  sunshine,  while  a  challenging  kind 
of  voice  shouted: 

"I  Ve  come  out  on  purpose  to  interrupt,  so  I  'm 
not  going  to  apologize." 

"Why,  Tom  McLean!"  Katherine  cried,  hurrying 
forward  with  characteristic  impetuosity.  "  How  glad 
I  am  to  see  you!" 

And  Archie,  who  was  conscious  of  an  uncomfortable 
sensation,  as  if  he  had  suddenly  been  dropped  upon 
bed-rock, — a  foundation  manifestly  inhospitable  to 
air  castles, — helped  himself  to  another  grape,  before 
inquiring  carelessly,  "Hullo,  Thomas,  where  did  you 
tumble  from  ? ' ' 

Then  the  three  young  people  turned  and  sauntered 
in  animated  converse  across  the  lawn,  beyond  which 
the  tall  figure  of  Grandmother  Day,  standing  on  the 
back  veranda  under  an  arch  of  crimson  woodbine, 
gave  the  finishing  touch  to  a  pleasant  family  scene. 


CHAPTER  IV 

TOM 

"  Youth  is  the  only  time 
To  think  and  to  decide  on  a  great  course  ; 
Manhood  with  action  follows." 

"  I  'M  not  sure  that  I  should  have  known  you, 
|  Katharine, "  Tom  remarked,  when,  an  hour  or 
more  later,  the  two  cousins  found  themselves  in  un- 
disputed possession  of  the  long  parlor,  and  free  to  com- 
pare notes  in  that  personal  vein  so  dear  to  the  heart  of 
youth.  Archie  had  departed,  directly  after  dinner, 
for  a  destination  easy  to  surmise;  and  grandmother 
and  Aunt  Fanny  had  betaken  themselves  to  the  pri- 
vacy of  their  respective  chambers,  where,  unmolested 
and  unobserved,  they  might  indulge  in  that  gentle  sab- 
batical meditation  which  so  easily  and  imperceptibly 
merges  into  a  still  gentler  sabbatical  slumber. 

"Really!"  Katherine  exclaimed,  with  undisguised 
interest  in  the  subject  of  discussion.  "  I  suppose  it  's 
the  pigtails  that  you  miss." 

"I  didn't  say  I  missed  anything,"  was  the  non- 
committal rejoinder,  calculated  rather  to  conceal  than 
to  betray  any  complimentary  sentiments  on  the  part 
of  the  speaker  such  as  might  have  been  supposed  to 
prompt  his  previous  remark. 

Indeed  Tom  McLean  was  not  much  given  to  mak- 


Tom  181 

ing  complimentary  speeches.  If,  years  ago,  he  had 
almost  turned  his  little  cousin's  head  by  telling  her 
that  she  acted  "  dumb  crambo  "  better  than  any  of  the 
Delphi  girls,  it  had  been  a  mere  statement  of  fact  made 
rather  in  the  interest  of  accuracy  than  with  a  view  to 
giving  pleasure.  He  had  always  liked  Katherine,  but 
it  must  be  admitted  that  his  regard  for  her  was  based 
largely  upon  her  claim  to  the  unenviable  titles  of  "tom- 
boy," "spitfire"  and  the  like.  She  was  "good  as  a 
boy," — as  high  a  form  of  praise  as  Tom  yet  had  at  his 
command  for  any  girl.  To  find  her  grown  into  a  bona- 
fide  young  lady,  with  long  dresses  and  pretty  manners 
would  have  been  disconcerting  but  for  a  reassuring 
something  in  her  speech  and  looks  which  permitted 
one  to  surmise  that  if  she  no  longer  climbed  trees  and 
played  tag  she  would  have  very  much  liked  to  do  so. 

The  two  young  people  had  not  met  for  close  upon 
five  years,  and,  meanwhile,  each  had  been  vouchsafed 
a  taste  of  life,  and  each  had  found  it  good.  Tom  indeed, 
had  had  an  unusually  strenuous  time  of  it  for  a  man  of 
his  years,  and  so  well  had  hard  work  suited  him  that  he 
was  inclined  to  think  slightingly  of  everything  else. 

This  minister's  son  had,  naturally  enough,  been  des- 
tined by  his  father  for  one  or  another  of  the  liberal 
professions,  but  Dr.  McLean  did  not  press  the  boy  in 
the  choice  of  a  calling  until  after  he  had  passed  his  col- 
lege entrance-examinations, — which,  by  the  way,  was 
done  with  honors.  He  then  gave  him  his  choice  be- 
tween law,  medicine  and  the  ministry ;  and  one  may 
imagine  the  excellent  man's  discomfiture  when  his  son 
replied  that  he  had  decided  to  become  a  stock-broker. 

Then  why  had  he  worked  so  hard  at  the  preparatory 
school  ? 

Well,  partly  in  order  to  prove  to  himself  that  he  had 


1 82  Katherine  Day 

brains  enough  to  be  doctor  or  parson, — if  he  had  not 
that  quantum  sufficit  he  was  sure  he  had  better  keep 
out  of  business, — and  partly  because  he  had  not 
wanted  to  make  up  his  mind  prematurely. 

"You  know,"  he  remarked,  "I've  been  rather 
young — up  to  now ! ' ' 

"  Now" — that  is  to  say  at  eighteen — he  felt  himself 
ripe  for  judgment,  as  he  certainly  proved  ripe  for 
action,  since  he  carried  his  point  and  forthwith  got 
himself  into  the  Wall  Street  office  of  a  college  class- 
mate of  his  father's. 

Dr.  McLean  was  something  of  a  philosopher,  and, 
after  recovering  from  the  first  shock  of  disappoint- 
ment, he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  if  a  boy  of  good 
parts  who  had  been  brought  up  in  Delphi, — an  agree- 
able place  of  residence,  to  be  sure,  but  no  less  innocent 
of  stock  markets  than  of  Greek  oracles, — if  such  a  boy 
had  set  his  heart  on  a  business  life,  there  was  a  fair 
probability  that  he  knew  what  he  was  about.  The 
reverend  doctor,  for  all  that  pioneer  service,  the 
mention  of  which  had  long  ago  so  fired  the  imagina- 
tion of  his  little  niece,  had  sometimes  been  conscious 
of  hankerings  after  a  bit  more  of  the  storm  and 
stress, — nay  of  the  very  noise  and  dust, — of  life  than 
had  fallen  to  his  share;  and  as  he  subjected  his  son's 
countenance  to  an  unwonted  scrutiny,  studying  espe- 
cially the  outline  of  the  bony  structure  as  visible  in 
temple,  chin  and  cheek, — he  concluded  that  there  was 
grit  enough  in  him  to  ensure  a  fair  chance  in  the  mod- 
ern arena.  He  had  honest  eyes  too  and  a  mouth  that 
was  curiously  expressive,  for  all  its  proximity  to  a  fine 
but  unsympathetic  chin.  So  the  boy  had  his  way,  and 
carried  his  obstinate  chin  and  his  honest  eyes  into  Wall 
Street. 


Tom  183 

"Do  you  find,  sir,  that  your  college  education  has 
been  of  much  real  use?"  he  asked  his  chief  one  day 
when  there  was  nothing  doing,  and  the  senior  part- 
ner of  Ford  &  Bridgman  seemed  momentarily  aware 
of  his  existence. 

"Not  the  Latin  and  the  Greek  of  it  perhaps,"  was 
the  reply.  "It's  the  social  advantage  that  tells;" — 
and  Tom,  who  had  yet  to  learn  that  business  as  well 
as  pleasure  has  its  social  aspect,  was  almost  inclined 
to  resent  so  irrelevant  an  answer. 

The  boy  was  himself  rather  exceptionally  indiffer- 
ent to  what  he  conceived  as  falling  under  the  head  of 
social  advantages,  and  one  of  the  chief  charms  of  life 
to  him  in  New  York  had  been  his  complete  exemption 
from  the  corresponding  obligations.  He  lived  in  lodg- 
ings, and  foraged  for  his  meals,  nor  was  he  conscious  of 
the  faintest  or  most  transitory  craving  for  a  closer  in- 
tercourse with  his  kind.  He  liked  his  work,  even  the 
drudgery  of  it,  for  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing 
himself  to  be  a  square  man  in  a  square  hole ;  and  for 
recreation  he  devoured  books — especially  history  and 
biography — and  took  lessons  in  boxing. 

Now  it  chanced  that  Tom  McLean  could  hardly 
have  served  his  apprenticeship  in  Wall  Street  at  a 
more  favorable  period ;  for  by  the  time  he  had  got  his 
eyes  well  opened  in  the  business  sense, — that  is,  after 
about  three  years'  work, — he  was  treated  to  a  uniquely 
instructive  object-lesson  in  the  shape  of  the  great 
financial  panic  of  1873.  In  this  disconcerting  crisis 
he  saw  one  concern  after  another  swept  off  its  feet  and 
engulfed  in  the  general  ruin,  while  the  house  he  served 
stood  firm;  and  he  would  not  have  been  possessed  of 
the  business  acumen  which  alone  could  justify  his 
choice  of  a  calling,  had  he  been  slow  to  perceive  why 


184  Katharine  Day 

Ford  &  Bridgman  were  weathering  the  storm,  nor 
why  so  many  had  been  swamped. 

"You  're  learning  a  thing  or  two  these  days,"  Lu- 
ther Bridgman,  his  father's  friend  remarked,  the 
morning  Waters  &  Co.  went  down  on  Q.  D. 

"I  know  it,"  Tom  answered, — and  there  was  some- 
thing in  the  boy's  enunciation  of  this  laconic  reply 
which  fixed  it  in  the  mind  of  his  superior. 

"That  young  McLean  is  getting  the  hang  of  things," 
Bridgman  remarked  to  his  senior  in  the  firm  a  day  or 
two  later. 

"Yes,  I  Ve  noticed  it,"  was  the  reply;  which,  com- 
ing from  one  whose  notice  was  about  as  well  worth 
having  as  that  of  any  man  in  Wall  Street,  meant  a  good 
deal. 

"Shall  we  ask  Henckelmann  for  half  a  million?" 
inquired  a  voice  from  a  neighboring  desk. 

Colonel  Ford  ran  his  fingers  through  a  pile  of  papers 
before  him,  without,  however,  taking  special  cogniz- 
ance of  them. 

"Hm!  better  make  it  a  million,"  was  his  casual 
rejoinder. 

Then,  picking  up  the  thread  he  had  dropped: — 
"The  boy  's  steady,  too,"  he  observed. 

The  great  panic  ran  its  course,  like  any  other  ele- 
mental storm, — growing,  culminating,  breaking,  sub- 
siding,— and  in  the  period  of  general  stagnation  that 
ensued,  the  future  came  to  look  somewhat  less  glitter- 
ing to  our  young  broker's  clerk;  insomuch  that  he 
was  occasionally  tempted  to  wonder  whether  it  might 
not  have  proved  quite  as  stimulating  to  study  the 
pulse  of  a  patient  or  the  conscience  of  a  sinner  as  to 
keep  the  in-and-out  books  at  Ford  &  Bridgman 's. 
And  then,  after  several  years  of  more  or  less  instruc- 


Tom  185 

tive  drudgery, — remunerated,  however,  according  to 
a  gratifyingly  ascending  scale, — that  same  young 
McLean  who  had  been  observed  to  have  got  the  hang 
of  things,  was  invited  to  take  charge  of  a  branch  office 
in  Boston,  where  the  development  of  certain  new 
interests  made  it  desirable  for  Ford  &  Bridgman  to 
have  a  representative  on  the  local  stock  exchange. 
The  which  important  step  brings  us  back  to  Grand- 
mother Day's  parlor,  where  our  two  young  people  are 
engaged  in  discovering  one  another. 

"I  should  have  known  you  anywhere,"  Katherine 
remarked,  pursuing  the  general  tenor  of  the  conversa- 
tion, while  she  studied  her  cousin's  countenance  with 
the  frank  interest  permitted  to  near  relatives.  "  The 
beard  has  not  changed  you  as  much  as  I  should  have 
thought  it  would,"  she  added,  trying  to  recollect  what 
kind  of  a  mouth  it  was  that  the  heavy  growth  con- 
cealed. 

"Oh,  of  course  I  should  n't  have  changed  as  much 
as  you,"  he  replied,  "for  I  am  so  much  older.  I  must 
have  been  pretty  well  licked  into  shape  by  the  last 
time  we  saw  each  other." 

"  Yes,  you  are  a  good  deal  older,  of  course,"  she  ad- 
mitted. "Four  years,  I  think.  And  yet — I  'm  not 
sure  that  that  accounts  for  it.  Several  of  the  boys  of 
your  age  have  turned  into  quite  different  persons 
in  the  year  or  two  we  have  been  away.  But  some- 
how you  always  seemed  to  me  grown  up,  even  when 
you  wore  jackets.  You  were  the  only  one  of  the  boys 
who  used  to  make  my  big  brother  seem  young." 

"I  wish  I  had  known  it!  It  might  have  been  a 
consolation  to  me  that  year — the  last  time  I  saw  you 
— when  I  found  Archie  was  taller  than  I.  It  was  es- 
pecially mortifying,  because  I  had  always  meant  to 


1 86  Katharine  Day 

be  tall ! ' ' — and  the  young  man  looked  quite  seriously 
chagrined,  as  if  he  were  not  yet  reconciled  to  having 
been  so  rudely  thwarted.  Katherine  smiled,  en- 
chanted with  this  naive  admission. 

"  It  must  have  seemed  strange  to  you,  "she  observed, 
with  a  mocking  light  in  her  eyes  that  he  only  half 
relished:  "It  must  have  seemed  strange  to  have  to 
give  in." 

"I  didn't  give  in,"  he  declared  stoutly.  "I've 
never  given  in!  I  'm  always  trying  to  grow  taller!" 

"  I  suppose  that's  what  makes  you  look  taller  than 
you  are.  But,  really  Tom,  you  're  a  very  good  height. 
You  're  a  good  deal  taller  than  I  am. ' ' 

"I  don't  think  so,"  he  answered  doubtfully,  and 
still  as  serious  as  ever. 

"Come  and  measure," — and  Katherine  went  to  one 
of  the  long  pier-glasses  where  Tom  promptly  joined 
her,  and  where  they  gravely  placed  themselves  back  to 
back  after  the  traditional  manner  of  such  demonstra- 
tions. 

"There!  you  see  I  was  right!"  Katherine  cried 
triumphantly,  as  they  turned  their  heads  to  look  at 
the  reflection  over  their  shoulders,  and  their  eyes  met 
in  the  glass.  "You  're  fully  two  inches  taller  than  I, 
just  as  I  thought!" — and  so  gratifying  was  the  result 
from  his  own  point  of  view  that  for  once  Tom  did  not 
at  all  mind  being  found  in  the  wrong. 

"You  always  did  succeed  in  what  you  tried  for," 
Katherine  remarked,  in  a  tone  of  comfortable  assur- 
ance, as  she  ensconced  herself  in  the  curve  of  a  red- 
velvet  window  seat.  "  I  wonder  how  you  do  it." 

"I  never  got  anything  without  working  for  it, — I 
can  tell  you  that ! "  Tom  declared,  casting  about  for  an 
available  chair, 


Tom  187 

Seizing  the  most  portable,  which  chanced  to  be  a 
spindle-legged,  yellow-covered  one,  the  envied  and 
admired  intimate  of  Katherine's  childhood,  he  planted 
it  in  her  neighborhood,  and  seated  himself  astride  of  it 
with  his  arms  along  the  fragile  back.  The  chair  gave 
a  small,  protesting  creak,  but  it  stood  the  strain  better 
than  could  have  been  expected  of  such  a  manifest 
favorite  of  fortune. 

Thus  comfortably  established,  Tom,  quite  unaware 
of  Katherine's  tender  solicitude  for  an  old  friend,  in- 
quired: "  Why  did  you  ask  that  ?  Girls  don 't  have  to 
do  things, — girls  like  you  I  mean." 

"  Oh  no!  girls  don't  matter,  of  course,"  she  laughed 
good-humoredly, — "girls  like  me!  —  but  there  's 
Archie." 

"Oh,  Archie  does  n't  count  either.  He  's  got  all  he 
wants  and  he  would  never  work  if  he  could  help  it." 

"I'm  not  so  sure  of  that,"  Katherine  replied,  brid- 
ling loyally.  "He  never  had  an  object  before;  but 
he  has  one  now." 

"  You  mean  Miss  Gerald  ?  Is  she  the  kind  of  girl  to 
make  him  ambitious  ? ' ' 

"  In  a  way — yes.  That  is,  her  father  wants  Archie 
to  make  a  start  in  life  before  they  marry." 

"  Oh!  that 's  it! — well,  if  it 's  business  Archie's  look- 
ing out  for,  there  's  not  likely  to  be  any  serious  hitch, 
He  's  got  capital  enough  to  give  him  a  start.  Why,  he 
must  have  about  a  hundred  thousand;  has  n't 
he?" 

"  I  believe  so,"  Katherine  admitted,  feeling  that  the 
conversation  was  taking  rather  a  personal  turn. 

"Thunder!  if  I  had  half  that — "  and  Tom  stopped 
himself  short  off. 

"  But  you  're  doing  well  without  it,  are  you  not?" 


1 88  Katherine  Day 

Katherine  asked.  "  I  thought  you  were  practically  at 
the  head  of  things  in  your  office." 

"Which  means  that  I  do  practically  all  the  work  and 
somebody  else  gets  practically  all  the  profits.  Not 
that  I  mind  the  work,"  he  added,  "and  I  don't  so 
very  much  mind  the  profits  either, — they  're  no  great 
shakes  these  days.  But, — "  and  Tom  thought  in  pass- 
ing that  Katherine  must  be  as  good  as  a  boy  still,  in 
spite  of  the  long  dresses  and  the  suppressed  pigtails, 
or  he  should  not  be  talking  sense  to  her, — "But,"  he 
went  on,  "I  am  sure  it  won't  be  long  before  things 
take  a  turn  for  the  better,  and  the  man  with  capital 
is  going  to  have  his  innings." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  innings?  You  mean  just 
that  he  's  going  to  get  rich? " 

"Yes,  just  that! — and  that 's  just  enough  according 
to  my  thinking." 

Katherine  shook  her  head  with  sceptical  intent. 

"Perhaps  if  you  had  money  you  would  n't  think  it 
so  important,"  she  observed,  her  mind  turning  to 
Archie,"while  she  wondered,  as  she  had  often  done  be- 
fore, whether  his  fortune  might  not  prove  rather  a 
handicap  than  otherwise. 

And  Tom,  thinking  that  she  was  assuming  a  supe- 
rior wisdom  based  on  her  riches  and  Archie's,  retorted 
rather  scornfully:  "Oh,  I  don't  mean  any  beggarly 
little  hundred  thousand.  I  mean  something  really 
big!" 

Katherine  regarded  him  with  a  new  interest  as  he 
sat  there  astride  the  poor  little  yellow  chair  that  was 
never  intended  for  such  robust  experiences.  Yes, 
Tom  was  a  full  grown  man,  she  thought,  with  a  critical 
contemplation  of  his  big  frame  and  the  lean  habit  that 
brought  out  the  lines  of  shoulder  and  cheek-bone ;  he 


Tom  189 

need  n't  try  to  grow  taller!  A  man  has  more  than  one 
dimension.  He  was  big  enough, — yes!  big  enough, 
physically  and  mentally.  The  young  girl  found  her- 
self getting  an  impression  of  brute  force  that  half 
repelled  her.  After  all,  strength,  mere  strength  and 
bulk,  were  not  enough — even  in  things  of  the  charac- 
ter. How  much  more  attractive  Tom  would  be, 
more  attractive  and  more  really  admirable,  if  some  of 
Archie's  refinement,  some  of  Archie's  grace  of  mind 
and  body  could  be  got  into  him.  She  was  not  sure 
that  the  years  had  improved  him.  He  had  had  his 
will  of  them,  but, — had  they  not  taken  their  revenge 
upon  him  ?  Had  he  not  roughened  needlessly? 

"  So  you  're  going  to  be  very  rich,"  she  said,  without 
feeling  it  necessary  to  add  a  proviso,  since  what  he 
wanted  he  would  have;  " a  millionaire  perhaps." 

"Yes,  a  millionaire — at  least!"  and  he  too  made  no 
proviso. 

"And  what  do  you  want  that  for?" 

"I  want  to  be  rich  because  I  want  power!"  he  an- 
swered, looking  her  straight  in  the  face.  Well,  his 
eyes  were  honest, — there  was  no  doubt  about  that. 

"I  wonder  what  you  will  do  with  power,"  she 
queried,  answering  that  look  of  his  eyes,  and  thinking 
that  perhaps,  after  all,  he  might  do  something  fine 
with  it. 

"I  shall  use  it." 

"  That  is,  you  will  do  good  with  it? " 

"  I  don't  say  that;  but — I  don't  propose  to  do  any 
harm  with  it." 

The  sun  was  getting  low,  and  was  just  peering  in 
under  the  rose-trellises  of  the  shallow  veranda,  and 
striking  full  into  Tom's  eyes.  Katherine  put  up  her 
hand  to  draw  the  shade. 


190  Katherine  Day 

"No,"  he  said.  "It  doesn't  bother  me.  When 
it  's  so  low  as  that  I  can  look  it  in  the  eye  without 
blinking." 

"  Yes,  and  so  can  I ;  but  I  don't  like  to,  for  it  makes 
you  see  black  balls  floating  in  the  air  afterward." 

"So  it  does!" — and  Tom  began  following  with 
vacant  gaze  the  floating  simulacrums. 

"Do  you  know,"  Katherine  remarked,  thought- 
fully, "it  seems  to  me  just  as  foolish  to  want  power 
that  you  've  no  special  use  for  as  to  look  at  the  sun 
just  for  the  sake  of  proving  you  can. " 

Tom,  who  had  released  the  spindle-legged  chair 
from  unaccustomed  durance,  was  pacing  up  and 
down  the  room,  blinking  vigorously  at  his  black  spots. 

"Now,  Katherine,  you  're  talking  rubbish!"  he  ex- 
claimed, coming  close  up  to  where  she  sat  and  look- 
ing down  upon  her  with  great  energy  of  protest.  "  You 
might  as  well  say  that  a  man  should  n't  want  to 
be  physically  strong,  to  get  up  his  muscle,  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing,  until  he  knew  just  what  blows  he  meant 
to  give,  just  what  weights  he  meant  to  lift.  Strength 
is  a  good  thing  in  itself,  and  sure  to  come  into  play! 
And  power, — power  is  better  still! " 

Katherine,  who  did  not  relish  being  looked  down 
upon  in  this  manner,  even  when  her  antagonist  did 
happen  to  be  two  inches  taller  than  she,  stood  on  her 
feet,  that  she  might  face  him  practically  on  a  level. 

"Oh,  yes!"  she  said.  "Power  's  a  good  thing,  of 
course.  But  it  is  n't  the  only  good  thing, — and  I  'm 
not  at  all  sure  it  's  the  best  thing." 

"What  's  better?" 

Instead  of  answering  directly  she  moved  over  to  the 
piano,  and  sat  down  upon  the  revolving  stool  where 
she  always  felt  pleasantly  at  home ;  and  not  until  she 


Tom  191 

fiad  taken  a  turn  or  two  on  this  small  eminence  did 
she  say : 

"  I  don't  know  whether  I  can  tell  you  what  I  mean, 
but — I  'm  thinking  of  what  you  said  about  work  and 
capital  just  now.  Power  seems  to  me  like  the  hard 
work;  and  capital — does  n't  that  sometimes  stand  for 
something  even  more — what  shall  I  say  ? — efficacious, 
— like  influence,  for  example?" 

"Yes,  it  does!  For  another  kind  of  power — the 
kind  I  want." 

"  Oh,  I  did  n't  mean  it  literally."  And,  sitting  side- 
ways on  the  stool,  she  reached  across  with  her  right 
hand,  running  her  fingers  over  the  keys  as  absently 
and  easily  as  she  might  have  folded  and  unfolded  a 
fan. 

"Play  me  something,"  he  cried.  "Talking 's  no 
good." 

"No  good?     Why,  I  love  to  talk!" 

"You  Ve  probably  had  more  practice  than  I.  I 
used  to  forget  the  sound  of  my  own  voice  when  I  lived 
in  New  York.  Play  me  something." 

As  she  played,  Tom  sat  watching  the  shapely  hands, 
and  wondering  at  her  control  of  the  swift  moving  fin- 
gers, and  at  their  skill  and  strength.  To  his  mind,  for 
he  was  no  connoisseur,  her  playing  seemed  a  marvel- 
lous thing;  and,  as  he  thought  how  lightly  she  must 
have  acquired  this  power — for  a  kind  of  power  it  was 
— it  occurred  to  him  that  a  man  might  make  a  success 
without  just  the  special  sort  of  sledge-hammer  effort 
he  had  been  exerting  all  his  life.  Katherine  and 
Archie  were  alike  in  many  ways ;  perhaps  Archie  was 
more  of  a  man  than  he  had  the  credit  of  being.  There 
was  lots  of  stuff  in  Katherine ;  there  might  be  stuff  in 
Archie,  too,  only  it  had  n't  been  brought  out.  Archie 


1 92  Katherine  Day 

was  certainly  clever;  he  had  brains,  he  had  influence 
of  a  certain  kind — the  kind  to  make  him  popular. 
What  was  that  that  Colonel  Ford  had  said  years  ago  ? 
"It  's  the  social  advantage  that  tells."  Tom  had  lived 
seven  years  since  he  had  heard  that  speech,  uncom- 
prehended,  secretly  depreciated,  at  the  moment.  He 
had  learned  a  good  deal  in  the  interval,  and  he  had  ac- 
quired an  inkling  of  what  the  great  stock-broker's 
remark  might  signify. 

"It  's  the  social  advantage  that  tells."  Well,  Archie 
was  possessed  of  social  advantage  as  well  as  capital. 
They  were  both  things  that  were  bound  to  tell  in  the 
coming  revival  of  business  so  confidently  anticipated. 

Tom  had  never  cared  for  Archie;  he  had  entered 
him  on  his  books  as  a  light-weight.  But  who  could 
say?  Perhaps  the  very  unlikeness  of  the  two  men 
might  be  an  advantage  in  a  combination.  Tom  knew 
there  was  ballast  enough  in  his  own  character  and 
training  to  keep  the  ship  steady.  Archie  might  fur- 
nish the  sail,  a  good  wide  spread  of  canvas  that  would 
bulge  to  the  wind.  Jove!  they  might  be  going  at  a 
spanking  rate ! 

He  sprang  to  his  feet  and  strode  to  an  east  window 
that  looked  across  the  lawn  and  the  circular  driveway 
to  the  garden  where  he  had  found  his  two  cousins  that 
morning.  He  had  come  professedly  to  interrupt. 
Who  could  tell?  Perhaps  he  had  more  than  inter- 
rupted; perhaps  that  interruption  was  destined  to 
give  an  entirely  new  turn  to  Archie's  career — to  his 
own. 

Tom  expressed  himself  much  better  in  soliloquy 
than  in  dialogue ;  it  was  the  result  of  long  habit.  If 
he  had  undertaken  to  say  all  this  to  another  person, 
it  would  have  seemed  too  fanciful.  He  would  have 


Tom  193 

got  pugnacious  and  sceptical.  But  talking  to  himself 
was  another  matter;  he  knew  his  audience  and  he 
knew  his  interlocutor,  and  they  usually  hit  it  off  very 
well. 

"  You  would  like  to  get  out  of  doors,"  said  a  voice  at 
his  shoulder. 

He  had  not  noticed  when  the  music  ceased. 

"I  beg  your  pardon!"  he  blurted  out.  "I'm 
afraid  I  had  stopped  listening.  But  I  enjoyed  the 
first  part  very  much." 

"Oh,  that  's  natural  enough.  Music  almost  al- 
ways sets  one  thinking,  and  then  one  forgets  to 
listen." 

"What  tells  is  the  social  advantage!"  The  words 
came  to  him  again  as  he  listened  to  the  girl's  easy 
speech,  but  only  to  think  the  more  persistently  of  her 
brother. 

"  I  should  like  a  breath  of  air  myself,"  she  was  say- 
ing, "  before  it  grows  dark.  Come ;  let  us  have  a  look  at 
the  poor  old  garden.  It  gets  so  little  attention  these 
days  when  Peter  has  finished  with  it." 

"  Are  n't  you  going  to  put  on  a  hat? "  Tom  asked,  as 
he  picked  up  his  own  off  the  hall  table. 

"No,  I  don't  need  one.  I  like  to  feel  all  the  air  I 
can." 

He  wished  Archie  were  more  like  his  sister;  if  he 
were,  it  would  be  worth  thinking  of! 

"Katherine,"  he  cried  suddenly,  as  they  stood  to- 
gether under  the  arching  woodbine;  "we  Ve  been 
talking  such  a  lot  about  me  and  what  I  want  to  do, — 
what  would  you  like  to  do?" 

She  turned  and  looked  him  in  the  face,  with  a  cer- 
tain confident  challenge  he  would  have  been  glad  to 

see  in  Archie's  countenance. 
13 


194  Katherine  Day 

"Do?"  she  said,  "I  should  like  to  race  you  to  the 
end  of  the  garden  walk.  One,  two,  three, — "  and  off 
she  sped,  fleet  as  a  deer  across  the  lawn. 

She  had  given  him  fair  warning;  the  "one-two- 
three —  "  had  been  spoken  with  the  conventional  de- 
liberation. But,  how  she  had  sprung  from  the  low 
step!  He  gave  chase  with  a  will, — and  Tom  was  a 
good  runner.  Give  him  a  half-mile  stretch  and  it 
would  have  been  a  sure  thing,  but  this  little  spurt  of 
thirty  rods, — he  could  n't  get  near  her! 

"There,  I  've  done  it!"  she  laughed,  as  he  came  up 
with  her  where  she  stood,  with  only  slightly  quickened 
breath,  only  slightly  heightened  color,  beside  her  old 
friend  the  quince-tree.  "You  see  what  comes  of  be- 
ing modest.  If  I  had  said  I  wanted  to  write  a  book 
or  found  a  hospital  I  should  n't  have  made  half  such  a 
success  of  it." 

"But  you  did  n't  give  a  fellow  half  a  chance,"  he 
protested.  "  Before  I  knew  what  you  were  after  you 
had  a  start  of  twenty  feet." 

"You  did  n't  think  quick  enough,"  she  retorted,  as 
they  turned  back  toward  the  house.  "It  's  better  to 
be  quick  than  strong — sometimes ! ' ' 


CHAPTER  V 

PARTNERS 

"  Each  chooses,  none  gainsays 
The  fancy  of  his  fellow,  a  paradise  for  him, 
A  hell  for  all  beside." 

THE  establishment  of  the  new  firm  of  McLean  & 
Day,  which  came  to  pass  some  six  months  later, 
involved  a  serious  step  for  its  senior  member;  it  was 
the  first  time  in  his  life  that  he  had  found  himself 
obliged  to  share  a  responsibility.  Tom  McLean,  even 
when  in  a  subordinate  position,  had  always  stood  on 
his  own  feet.  If,  when  in  the  Wall  Street  office  he  had 
been  employed  on  the  books,  it  was  he,  and  he  alone, 
who  was  to  answer  for  their  correctness;  if  he  under- 
took the  delivery  of  valuable  securities,  their  safety 
depended  solely  upon  his  personal  integrity  and  vigil- 
ance. Later,  when  at  the  head  of  the  Boston  office  of 
Ford  &  Bridgman, — a  post  which  involved  a  new  and 
more  exacting  trust, — he  never  had  occasion  to  con- 
sult any  one  else  in  a  matter  either  of  office  routine  or 
of  immediate  financial  expediency.  He  was,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  accountable  to  his  New  York  principals;  but 
as  far  as  the  details  of  the  business  were  concerned  he 
had  everything  in  his  own  hands,  and  there  was  nothing 
to  fear  from  the  mistaken  judgment  or  moral  obliquity 
of  another.  Under  the  new  arrangement  on  the 


196  Katherine  Day 

contrary,  advantageous  as  it  would  be  if  successful, 
there  was  an  unknown  quantity  to  be  reckoned  with ; 
and  the  consciousness  of  this  fact  irked  him. 

Indeed,  Tom  McLean  was  the  man  of  all  others  to 
feel  such  a  change  in  his  relative  status ;  for  not  only 
was  his  independence  of  action  literally  a  lifelong 
habit,  but  it  had  its  root  in  that  most  integral  part  of 
a  man  which  we  call  temperament.  The  unquestion- 
ing decision  with  which  he  had  chosen  his  calling  in 
life  was  no  more  characteristic  than  certain  manifes- 
tations of  self-sufficiency  in  his  very  babyhood.  If  it 
is  not  recorded  of  him  that  he  claimed  a  voice  in 
the  selection  of  his  own  christening-robe,  it"  is  at 
least  an  undisputed  fact  that,  at  a  not  very  much 
later  date,  he  reversed  one  of  the  chief  results  of  the 
aforesaid  function. 

His  mother,  who  was  a  daughter  of  Attorney-Gen- 
eral Darling,  and  who  had  very  naturally  desired  to 
perpetuate  so  distinguished  a  name,  had  called  her  son 
after  his  grandfather;  and  as  Arthur  Darling  McLean 
he  still  stands  recorded  upon  the  parish  register  of  All 
Souls'  Church  in  Delphi.  But  scarcely  had  the  boy 
attained  to  articulate  speech  than  he  calmly  repudiated 
what  certainly  would  have  proved  a  misnomer.  In 
answer  to  those  inquiries  as  to  his  name  which  must 
afflict  every  intelligent  child  with  a  sense  of  the  pau- 
city of  human  ideas,  he  invariably  stated  that  it  was 
Tommy. 

"But  no!"  his  mother  would  protest.  "Your  name 
is  not  Tommy;  it  is  Arthur  Darling.  Now  tell  the 
gentleman  your  name,  like  a  good  boy."  Upon 
which  the  child  would  quietly,  but  with  precocious 
firmness,  reiterate  his  original  statement. 

He  was  not  otherwise  a  troublesome  little  boy,  being 


Partners  197 

in  fact  too  agreeably  occupied  with  his  own  legitimate 
pursuits  to  get  into  mischief.  If  he  was  not  urging  his 
toy  horses  to  an  imaginary  gallop  of  the  maddest 
description,  or  playing  "  choo-choo"  with  the  nursery 
chairs,  he  was  presumably  digging  unfathomable  holes 
in  the  sand-bank  provided  for  that  purpose  in  the  back 
yard.  Owing  to  this  same  self-sufficiency  then,  he  had 
never  incurred  anything  so  severe  as  corporal  punish- 
ment, even  of  that  gentle  kind  which  is  painful  only  to 
the  fond  parent  who  administers  it.  When,  however, 
the  small  bundle  of  obstinacy  had  for  several  weeks 
persisted  in  this  wilful  misstatement  of  a  patent  fact 
it  was  decided  that  he  must  be  disciplined,  to  the  end 
that  the  regrettable  difference  of  opinion  which  had 
arisen  in  the  family  should  be  settled  once  for  all. 

The  occasion  was  one  of  much  embarrassment  and 
distress  to  both  parents — especially  to  the  chief  execu- 
tioner, who  felt  as  if  his  fragile  victim  might  break  on 
his  hands;  but  the  castigation  was  resolutely  accom- 
plished, and  results  awaited  with  breathless  interest. 
The  suspense,  however,  was  not  prolonged ;  for  scarcely 
had  the  tiny  fellow  emerged  from  the  pain  and  indig- 
nity of  his  bitter  experience, — very  red  in  the  face,  but 
with  eyes  much  drier  than  his  father's, — than  he  was 
again  asked  his  name ;  and  again  he  stated,  with  a  firm- 
ness only  intensified  by  his  martyrdom,  that  his  name 
was  Tommy. 

At  that  dramatic  moment  the  young  minister  ex- 
changed a  look  with  his  wife,  and  finding  writ  clear  in 
her  eye  the  concession  which  already  struggled  for  pos- 
session of  his  own  heart,  he  formally  capitulated. 

"  Very  well,  my  son,"  he  declared,  measuring  for  the 
first  time  the  significance  of  the  sturdy  physiognomy 
that  confronted  him, — "  very  well,  your  name  shall  be 


198  Katherine  Day 

Tommy;  —  and  see  that  you  stick  to  it.  You  are 
henceforth  Thomas  McLean." 

The  rite  was  as  solemnly  performed  as  that  earlier 
ceremony  of  christening,  during  which  the  chief  par- 
ticipant had  confined  himself  to  a  succession  of  oratori- 
cal but  inarticulate  remarks;  whereas,  to-day,  he 
merely  took  occasion  to  reiterate  with  great  distinct- 
ness the  now  well-established  proposition:  "  My  name 
is  Tommy." 

"And  I  believe  he's  right  about  it,"  Justin  McLean 
declared,  when  the  conquering  hero  had  been  led  away 
to  his  evening  porridge.  "  It  will  be  a  disappointment 
for  your  father,  and  I  am  sure  it  is  quite  as  disappoint- 
ing for  us ;  but,  the  fact  is,  Tommy  was  never  intended 
for  an  Arthur  Darling! " 

And  now,  after  a  quarter  of  a  century  passed  in  the 
unimpeded  exercise  of  his  own  judgment,  this  same 
Tommy, — for  the  same  Tommy  he  was,  in  spite  of 
such  superficial  modifications  as  were  to  be  noted  in 
his  breadth  of  shoulder  and  depth  of  voice, — this  same 
Tommy  found  himself  admitting  into  his  own  affairs, 
and  on  practically  equal  terms,  a  man  whom  he  was 
not  in  a  position  to  answer  for. 

It  is  true  that  Archie  had  acquitted  himself  very 
well  during  the  six  months  that  he  had  spent  in 
the  office  learning  the  routine  of  business.  He  was 
naturally  quick-witted,  and  if  he  was  somewhat  fickle 
of  inclination  and  unstable  of  purpose,  the  incentive  at 
this  stage  of  his  career  was  sufficient  to  rouse  in 
him  a  semblance  of  persistence.  Yes,  Archie  had 
done  extremely  well  as  apprentice,  and  he  had  further- 
more agreed  to  all  the  conditions  imposed  for  the  future 
by  his  somewhat  dictatorial  partner.  What  he  wanted 
was  Winny,  and  he  was  joyfully  willing  to  accede  to 


Partners  199 

anything  which  promised  to  bring  that  enchanting 
acquisition  nearer. 

With  the  approval  of  Mr.  Gerald  the  boy  con- 
tributed about  half  his  fortune — namely  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars — to  the  new  venture,  while  to  offset  this, 
McLean  supplied  the  practical  training  and  a  business 
reputation  which  was  in  itself  a  good  working  capital, 
together  with  a  seat  on  the  stock  exchange,  the  pur- 
chase of  which  pretty  well  exhausted  his  private 
means. 

Gerald  was  shrewd  enough  to  perceive  that  his 
future  son-in-law  had  made  an  advantageous  arrange- 
ment, and  if  Tom  did  not  consider  himself  worsted,  we 
may  be  sure  that  it  was  from  no  excess  of  modesty  on 
his  part,  but  rather  from  a  very  clear  idea  of  the  value 
which  this  little  capital  of  Archie's  would  acquire 
under  his  own  excellent  management.  Tom,  who  was 
— and,  as  he  would  have  thought  with  reason — quite 
free  of  any  small  personal  vanity,  was  perfectly  well 
aware  that  he  possessed  unusual  business  ability. 

"  My  father  wanted  to  make  a  parson  of  me,"  he  said 
to  Katherine  one  day,  "or  a  lawyer,  or  a  doctor!  A 
fine  mess  I  should  have  made  of  it! " 

"I  don't  see  why,"  Katherine  protested.  "You 
got  honors  in  your  admission  examinations." 

"Of  course  I  did!  If  I  had  n't,  I  should  never  have 
had  the  cheek  to  go  into  business.  But  that 's  quite 
another  thing  to  truckling  to  patients  and  clients  and 
parishioners." 

"Why,  Tom,  how  absurd!  Anybody  would  think 
you  were  accusing  your  own  father  of  truckling. 

"Not  a  bit  of  it!  He  doesn't  need  to.  He  can 
handle  people  without  it.  Now  I  can't.  The  only 
thing  I  can  handle  is  facts." 


2OO  Katharine  Day 

"But  people  are  facts.  I'm  sure,  at  least,  ^that 
you  're  a  fact,"  and  Katherine  laughed  in  his  face  in  a 
way  she  had,  and  which  he  was  only  half  sure  he  liked. 

"Well,  that  tallies,  for  I've  always  been  able  to 
handle  myself." 

"Always?"  Katherine  repeated,  while  the  direction 
of  her  thoughts  changed.  "Always?  you  are  lucky!" 

"  It 's  not  luck,  it'  s  just, — grit." 

"And  do  you  suppose  it  will  always  be  so?  that  you 
will  always  be  able  to  handle  yourself?" 

"I'm  perfectly  sure  of  it ! " 

There  was  probably  nothing  that  Tom  McLean  felt 
so  entirely  sure  of  as  this.  He  had  fought  his  battles, 
he  had  suffered  his  defeats, — though  only  when  the 
odds  were  overwhelmingly  against  him, — but  in  defeat 
as  in  success  he  had  always  kept  himself  well  in  hand, 
and  nothing  would  have  convinced  him  that  he  should 
ever  lose  his  grip.  Perhaps  one  reason  of  his  confi- 
dence was  that  he  had  never  been  seriously  tested ;  in 
other  words,  that  he  had  never  been  divided  against 
himself.  Tom  was  presumably  dual  like  the  rest  of  us ; 
there  was  probably  in  his  constitution  as  in  that  of 
his  fellows,  not  only  the  something  which  strives  and 
achieves,  but  that  other  something  which  aspires  and 
suffers  ;  and  one  day  the  achievement  might  be 
blocked  and  impeded  by  the  demands  of  the  hitherto 
silent  partner.  But  up  to  this  time  he  had  known  no 
emotion  of  a  more  commanding  sort  than  that  which 
signalizes  the  appearance  of  a  first  moustache,  or  that 
other  more  agitating  but  hardly  more  vital  one  which 
attends  the  fluctuations  of  the  stock  market. 

It  was  perhaps  because  of  his  own  entire  immunity 
in  this  respect,  that  Tom  regarded  his  new  partner's 
sublimated  frame  of  mind  with  a  wonder  that  bor- 


Partners  201 

dered  on  scepticism.  How  a  man  of  twenty-four — an 
age  which  to  twenty-six  seems  but  two  degrees  re- 
moved from  complete  maturity — how  such  a  man, 
with  the  average  endowment  of  intelligence  and  expe- 
ience,  should  be  betrayed  into  extravagance  about  a 
mere  girl,  exceeded  not  only  the  comprehension,  but 
the  credulity,  of  our  dealer  in  facts. 

"  I  wish,  Tom,  you  would  be  a  little  less  supercilious, 
when  I  speak  of  Winny,"  Archie  once  cried  impa- 
tiently. "  If  I  were  not  the  most  amiable  chap  in  State 
Street  I  should  have  called  you  out  this  morning." 

Singularly  enough,  Tom,  with  all  his  hard  sense  and 
contempt  for  affectation,  was  not  unpleasantly  struck 
by  Archie's  characterization  of  himself  as  "a  chap 
in  State  Street."  Technically  considered,  they  were 
"in  State  Street,"  though  but  two  weeks  claimants  to 
the  distinction;  and  in  Tom's  mind,  quite  as  much  as 
in  Archie's,  that  was  the  essential  fact.  So  the  chap  in 
State  Street  escaped  criticism  on  that  head,  and  Tom 
only  answered  calmly,  as  he  lit  his  pipe, — for  the  busi- 
ness of  the  day  was  over, — "I  'm  afraid  I  should  not 
have  come  when  I  was  called, — which  might  have  been 
embarrassing  for  you. " 

"  But  seriously,  Tom !  have  n't  you  the  least  interest 
in  meeting  Winny  ?"  Archie  inquired,  seating  himself 
in  a  revolving  chair,  and  fixing  his  partner's  face. 

Now  Archie,  as  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  state,  was 
not  given  to  talking  freely  of  Winny  to  other  men  of 
his  acquaintance.  But  with  Tom  it  was  different. 
His  very  unimpressionableness  piqued  his  cousin;  it 
was  a  challenge  which  he  could  never  ignore.  Again 
and  again  Archie  found  himself  returning  to  the  sub- 
ject, and  little  by  little  the  desire  to  have  Tom  and 
Winny  meet,  and  to  witness  what  seemed  to  him  the 


2O2  Katharine  Day 

inevitable  subjugation  of  the  sceptic,  had  come  to  as- 
sume quite  unnatural  proportions  in  his  mind. 

' '  I  should  really  like  very  much  to  have  you  know 
her,"  he  persisted. 

"Why?" 

Why  ?  Why  because  it  is  perfectly  preposterous 
that  you  should  not.  Who  ever  heard  of  such  a  thing 
as  a  man  not  caring  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the 
girl  his  partner  is  engaged  to?" 

"  But,  good  Lord,  Archie!     I  've  met  Miss  Gerald." 
Met  her ! ' '  Archie  exclaimed  indignantly.     ' '  Why, 
she  was  only  fifteen  years  old  when  you  met  her  last. 
She  told  me  so." 

Was  the  man  of  facts  momentarily  flattered  to 
know  that  she  had  marked  the  date?  It  hardly 
seems  possible.  Yet  surely  there  was  just  the  shade 
of  gallantry  in  his  reply. 

"I  don't  know  how  old  she  was,"  he  returned, 
"but  she  was  old  enough  to  be  uncommonly  pretty." 

"There!  haven't  I  always  told  you  so?"  Archie 
cried,  triumphant.  He  was  extremely  gratified,  but 
not  yet  content.  "But,  Tom,  she  was  nothing  then 
to  what  she  is  now !  Those  two  years  in  Europe  were 
the  most  wonderful  thing.  She  opened  right  out  like 
— like  a  rose.  Of  course  that  is  an  awfully  old  com- 
parison, but,  somehow, — well,  you  know  it  's  new 
every  summer!" 

The  simplicity  of  this  little  speech  touched  Tom 
more  than  all  the  raptures  he  had  heard  before;  but 
it  did  not  move  him. 

"  I  have  n't  a  doubt  of  it,  Archie,"  he  said.  "  I  'm 
willing  to  grant  that  Miss  Gerald  is  everything  that 
no  other  girl  ever  was,  but — the  long  and  short  of  it 
is,  I  don't  get  on  with  girls." 


Partners  203 

You  get  on  with  Katherine." 

"Oh,  of  course!  That  's  another  thing.  Kather- 
ine is  my  cousin;  and  then — she  's  as  good  as  a  boy." 

"  She  's  a  long  sight  better  than  a  boy ! "  Archie  pro- 
tested. 

"Well,  that  's  as  you  look  at  it.  I  only  mean  that 
she  's  not  one  of  those  prettyish,  uppish  girls,  such  as 
I  've  known,  who  either  snub  a  man  or  expect  him 
to  fall  in  love  with  them." 

"She  may  not  expect  men  to  fall  in  love  with  her, 
but  they  do!" 

"  Do  they?"  Tom  asked,  in  a  tone  of  frank  surprise. 
"Now  I  should  n't  have  thought  it  of  her!" — and 
it  was  very  evident  that  Katherine  had  fallen  in  his 
estimation. 

But  Archie,  unable  to  conceive  such  a  point  of  view, 
could  not  refrain  from  a  little  bragging  on  his  sister's 
behalf. 

"Indeed  they  do,"  he  declared.  "Winny  says 
there  was  a  Scotch  student  in  Dresden  who  was  in  a 
very  bad  way  indeed,  and, — I  know  you  're  a  good 
sort,  Tom,  and  won't  try  to  spot  him, — but  there  's  a 
fellow  about  here,  a  classmate  of  mine,  who  's  got  his 
never-get-over.  He  used  to  come  home  and  spend 
Sundays  with  me,  and  he  was  terribly  smitten  with 
the  way  she  had  with  Cousin  Elmira.  I  had  told  him 
what  an  old  Tartar  Elmira  had  been  to  her,  and  he  set 
Katherine  up  as  a  saint  from  the  beginning.  And 
then  when  he  found  she  was  a  good  deal  better  than  a 
saint,  he  tumbled — flat !  The  funny  part  of  it  is  that 
he  can't  see  that  he  's  out  of  it." 

"Does  she  lead  him  on?"  Tom  asked  severely.  It 
was  a  term  he  had  heard  employed  in  similar  cases, 
and  one  which  he  understood  to  indicate  those 


204  Katharine  Day 

unhallowed  arts  by  which  harmless  youths  are  be- 
trayed to  their  undoing. 

" Lead  him  on! "  Archie  repeated.  "  Well,  I  should 
say  not!  She  's  a  perfect  iceberg!  You  'd  never 
know  her!  And  he  doesn't  come  to  the  house  as 
often  as  he  used ;  but  he  still  hopes  she  '11  change.  He 
won't  give  in." 

"  Is  it  she  who  tells  you  all  this? " 

"  Hardly !  Why,  she  does  n't  even  let  on  to  Winny, 
and  I  supposed  girls  always  told  each  other  things. 
What  I  know  I  get  straight  from  him.  Poor  old  chap ! 
he  's  working  like  a  tiger.  He  's  got  an  idea  that  if 
he  makes  a  howling  success  she  '11  soften." 

"  She  probably  will;  that  's  what  girls  like." 

"  Nonsense !  girls  are  not  so  calculating  as  you  think. 
That  is,  —there  are  only  two  girls  I  really  know,  and 
they  don't  care  the  turn  of  their  hand  for  money  and 
that  sort  of  thing.  I  say,  Tom,  what  has  soured  you 
on  'em  ?  Did  you  ever  get  left  ? ' ' 

"No,  I  never  got  left;  and  if  I  had  I  should  n't  tell 
you." 

"That  sounds  as  if  you  had;  but  I  know  better. 
You  have  n't  changed  any  that  I  can  see  in  twenty 
years.  I  rather  think  you  are  made  so.  But  that 
does  n't  seem  to  be  any  reason  why  you  should  n't  call 
on  Winny." 

"  Perhaps  I  will,  after  you  are  married." 

"I  don't  see  the  difference." 

"Neither  do  I;  only  it 's  further  off ."  And  Tom 
got  up  and  took  his  hat  from  a  peg  in  the  corner. 

So  Katherine  was  that  kind  of  a  girl,  after  all,  he 
thought,  as  he  marched  off  to  his  lodgings,  feeling  very 
much  put  about  at  the  news.  Of  course  she  could 
have  shaken  off  the  fellow  Archie  had  been  telling 


Partners  205 

about, if  she  had  n't  liked  to  have  him  dangle.  Girls 
were  just  alike,  after  all,  and  the  less  a  man  saw  of 
them  the  better.  For  the  next  ten  years,  at  least, 
Tom  McLean  did  n't  propose  to  have  anything  to  do 
with  them.  Not  that  he  considered  himself  in  the 
very  remotest  contingency  as  vulnerable.  He  had 
never  yet  known  what  it  was  to  have  his  fancy  stirred 
to  the  faintest  ripple,  and  he  did  not  think  he 
should  begin  at  this  late  day.  If  he  had  escaped 
hitherto  there  was  not  much  to  fear  at  twenty-six  and 
later.  He  was  a  man  grown,  as  Katherine  had  pro- 
nounced him  in  her  own  mind,  and  henceforth  he 
should  act  even  more  perfectly  in  accord  with  a  de- 
liberately formed  plan  of  life  than  he  could  have  hoped 
to  do  at  twenty.  He  was  to  acquire  power,  and  the 
kind  of  power  he  could  best  wield.  And  when  he  had 
achieved  it  he  should  know  how  to  use  it. 

At  thirty-five  he  should  probably  marry;  he  had 
placed  the  date  as  far  in  the  future  as  he  dared.  But 
he  had  once  heard  his  stepmother  say  that  up  to 
thirty-five  a  man  marries;  after  that  age  he  is  mar- 
ried. He  did  not  really  believe  that  he  should  ever  be 
the  kind  of  man  to  let  himself  be  married,  and  he 
would  have  given  little  heed  to  the  axiom  from  any 
lips  but  those  of  his  stepmother, — the  woman  for 
whose  judgment  he  had  a  greater  respect  than  for  that 
of  any  other  person  of  his  acquaintance,  his  own  father 
not  excepted.  In  fact,  Sarah  Day  McLean  was  ex- 
actly the  type  of  woman  he  should  go  in  search  of 
when  the  time  was  ripe.  She  was  strong,  she  was 
wise,  she  would  appreciate  power,  and  she  would  be  an 
inspiration  to  the  man  who  had  it.  Tom  had  heard 
a  good  deal  about  the  intuition  of  women,  and  he  as- 
sociated it  with  the  delicate,  dependent  variety  such 


206  Katherine  Day 

as  he  believed  Winny  Gerald  to  belong  to.  He 
wanted  something  better  than  intuition  in  his  help- 
meet ;  he  wanted  knowledge,  penetration,  gi  asp.  And 
that  was  what  his  stepmother  possessed,  which  made 
her  a  power  in  her  household,  in  her  parish, — which 
would  have  made  her  a  power  in  the  great  world.  He 
believed  that  if  his  stepmother  had  been  unmarried 
she  would  have  been  the  woman  of  his  choice  in  spite 
of  the  disparity  of  years!  From  which  it  may  easily 
be  inferred  that  Tom's  vision  of  matrimony  was  sin- 
gularly devoid  of  romance. 

By  the  time  he  had  reached  his  lodgings,  a  comfort- 
able, dingy  pair  of  rooms  decorated  chiefly  with  books 
and  boxing-gloves,  he  had  forgotten  all  about  his 
partner's  confidences.  And,  if  a  lingering  resentment 
toward  Katherine  for  allowing  men  to  be  foolish  about 
her  visited  his  mind  from  time  to  time,  this  caused  no 
interruption  in  the  pleasant  companionship  between 
the  cousins. 

As  the  season  advanced,  indeed,  and  the  trees  grew 
green,  it  came  to  seem  more  and  more  natural  to  give 
the  city  the  slip  for  the  sake  of  calling  upon  his  grand- 
mother; a  redoubling  of  filial  attention  which  in  a 
mere  stepgrandson  like  Tom  should  have  been  pecul- 
iarly gratifying  to  the  recipient. 


CHAPTER  VI 

PAUL 
"And  I  was  hers  to  live  or  to  die." 

ATHERINE  DAY  used  to  think,  at  this  period  of 
1  X  her  life,  that  if  it  were  not  for  Paul  Stuyvesant 
she  should  be  perfectly  happy;  if  only  he  would  not 
come  any  more  to  the  house  and  look  volumes — vol- 
umes that  everybody  could  read,  too,  with  an  ease 
that  was  peculiarly  exasperating  to  poor  Katherine! 
For  the  worst  of  Paul  was  that  he  was  without  doubt 
exactly  the  man  she  ought  to  have  married,  and  that 
she  herself  was  as  well  aware  of  the  fact  as  every 
one  else  appeared  to  be. 

Not  that  anyone  talked  to  her  on  the  subject.  It 
was  merely  that  the  general  approval  of  the  family 
had  always  been  unmistakably  apparent.  Even  Cousin 
Elmira  used  to  drop  commendatory  remarks  about 
Paul, — for  it  was  as  long  ago  as  that,  when  Katherine 
was  but  sixteen,  in  fact,  that  he  had  had  the  ill  luck  to 
fall  in  love  with  her.  Ill  luck  it  certainly  was,  inas- 
much as  Katherine,  usually  so  tender  of  other  peo- 
ple's sensibilities,  had  found  herself  in  this  instance 
driven  to  the  warmest  resentment  of  a  premature  in- 
vasion of  her  girlish  reserve.  Indeed  it  was  perhaps 
this  indiscretion  of  his,  almost  as  much  as  his  obvious 
merits,  which  had  sealed  the  young  collegian's  fate! 


208  Katherine  Day 

Paul  Stuyvesant  was  a  prepossessing  Philadel- 
phian  whom  Archie  had  made  friends  with  in  his 
freshman  year.  The  two  boys  had  taken  to  one  an- 
other from  the  first,  drawn  together,  partly  by  a  per- 
sonal attractiveness  which  characterized  each,  but 
quite  as  much  perhaps  by  their  unlikeness  of  tempera- 
ment and  disposition.  Paul  was  as  serious-minded 
as  Archie  was  volatile,  but  if  he  was  somewhat  de- 
ficient in  those  lighter  graces  which  distinguished  his 
friend,  these  were  more  than  offset  by  a  certain  no- 
bility, a  certain  exaltation  of  character  which  never 
quite  lost  its  power  over  the  latter,  though  he  was  pres- 
ently drawn  into  a  phase  of  college  life  in  which  Paul 
would  take  no  part.  Indeed,  Archie  always  clung  to 
Paul  as  to  a  sort  of  anchor  to  windward,  and  their 
friendship  would  probably  have  survived  a  greater 
strain  than  was  ever  put  upon  it,  even  had  the  un- 
deniable stimulus  of  the  young  man's  interest  in  Kath- 
erine been  lacking. 

Stuyvesant  was  now  in  the  medical  school  bringing 
a  more  than  respectable  talent  and  energy  to  bear 
'upon  his  equipment  for  the  calling  of  all  others  which 
Katherine  herself  held  in  highest  esteem.  Indeed  he 
made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  it  was  her  own  ardently 
expressed  preference  for  the  medical  profession  which 
had  years  ago  governed  his  choice.  She  knew  she  was 
perverse  in  taking  such  docility  amiss;  yet  the  fact 
remained  that  she  was  inclined  to  undervalue  his  am- 
bition precisely  because  it  had  owed  its  initiative  to 
her.  It  was  childish  in  a  man,  she  told  herself,  to 
allow  a  chit  of  sixteen  to  influence  his  career, — almost 
as  childish  as  to  fall  in  love  with  a  schoolgirl  who  had 
hardly  learned  to  say  her  amo,  amas,  amat, — much  less 
to  conjecture  the  meaning  of  its  English  equivalent. 


Paul  209 

Now  Paul  was  not  without  perception,  and  it  was 
perhaps  a  recognition  of  this  perversity  of  Katherine's 
which  had  chiefly  encouraged  him  in  his  persistence. 
Not  only  was  he  convinced  that  they  were  suited  to 
one  another,  but  he  believed  that  in  her  inmost  heart 
she  knew  it  as  well ;  and  he  was  inexperienced  enough 
to  base  a  large  hope  upon  the  fact.  His  chief  concern 
heretofore  had  been  lest  some  one  else  should  steal  a 
march  upon  him,  and  this  anxiety  was  much  accen- 
tuated during  a  six  weeks'  visit  which  Katherine 
had  recently  been  paying  her  Aunt  Anne  under  whose 
wing  she  had  seen  something  of  the  gay  world. 

Paul  had,  perhaps  unwisely,  failed  to  make  the  most 
of  his  social  opportunities  in  a  strange  city.  Up  to  the 
time  of  Katherine's  visit  there,  he  had  imagined  him- 
self to  be  best  serving  the  one  great  interest  of  his  life  by 
laboring  early  and  late  at  anatomy.  And  just  when  he 
was  beginning  to  feel  a  gratifying  familiarity  with  the 
bones  and  muscles,  the  pulmonary  tubes  and  auricular 
valves  of  the  human  organism,  he  discovered  that 
to  have  been  conversant  with  the  organism  of  local 
society  would  have  better  served  his  turn.  For  he 
was  constantly  hearing  of  Katherine  at  balls  and 
dinners,  and  if  he  was  not  afflicted  with  inordinate  en- 
comiums of  her,  he  yet  could  not  doubt  that  she  had 
been  the  object  of  them. 

Easter  had  fallen  early  that  year,  and  it  was  the 
fashionable  season's  spring  supplement  which  Kather- 
ine had  participated  in.  Consequently  she  had  come 
home  to  blossoming  trees  and  greening  grass  and  tiny 
garden  sproutings  which  Peter  best  knew  the  secret  of, 
and  she  would  have  found  it  hard  to  say  which  she 
considered  more  agreeable — the  exercise  of  dancing 
with  tall,  attentive  youths,  in  the  very  prettiest 


2io  Katharine  Day 

gowns  she  had  ever  possessed,  or  the  privilege  of 
weeding,  in  a  gingham  apron,  certain  unimportant 
garden  beds  which  Peter — neither  tall  nor  attentive 
—had  grudgingly  entrusted  to  her  care. 

When  she  was  not  digging  her  garden  or  riding 
horseback  or  gossiping  with  Winny,  Katherine  was 
not  infrequently  to  be  found  meekly  listening  to  those 
instructive  books  which  it  was  Aunt  Fanny's  special 
joy  to  read  aloud,  and  which  Grandmother  Day  could 
never  be  induced  to  hear. 

"  I  prefer  to  do  my  own  reading,"  the  old  lady  would 
say,  repairing  to  those  domains  of  household  industry 
or  authority  in  which  she  could  at  least  read  her  title 
clear. 

It  was  Decoration  Day.  Winny  and  Archie  were 
keeping  the  holiday  together, — which  is  to  say  that 
they  were  quite  inaccessible  to  the  unimportant  resi- 
due of  their  kind, — and  Katherine  had  fallen  an  easy 
victim  to  Aunt  Fanny's  zeal.  Roland  was  ordered 
for  four  o'clock  and  she  told  herself  that  a  good 
canter  would  be  ample  compensation  for  an  hour's 
durance. 

But  she  was  not  to  get  off  so  easily;  for,  scarcely 
had  the  reader's  voice  fallen  into  that  gently  soporific 
monotone  which  reduces  all  authors  to  very  much  the 
same  level  of  dulness,  when,  to  Katherine 's  extreme 
dissatisfaction,  Paul  Stuyvesant  was  announced.  To 
complete  her  discomfiture  Aunt  Fanny,  clutching  her 
instructive  tome  to  her  breast,  beat  a  hasty  retreat. 
It  was  the  sort  of  thing  that  people  were  always  do- 
ing, as  Katherine  reflected,  impatiently.  She  felt  it 
very  absurd  to  be  found,  on  a  glorious  spring  day,  sit- 
ting by  herself  in  the  house,  immersed  in  a  meaning- 
less web  of  crochet  work ;  and  even  as  she  rose  to  greet 


Paul  2 1 1 

her  visitor,  she  became  aware  that  Aunt  Fanny's  rock- 
ing chair  was  gently  testifying  to  recent  occupancy. 

"Aunt  Fanny  has  been  reading  aloud  to  me,"  she 
remarked,  with  a  self -consciousness  which  was  as  un- 
wonted as  it  was  annoying.  "  I  don't  know  why  she 
ran  off  so  suddenly." 

"Perhaps  your  aunt  disliked  being  interrupted," 
the  visitor  suggested ;  adding,  rather  tentatively, — "  I 
only  hope  you  did  n't  mind." 

"Well,  the  book  was  n't  as  interesting  to  me  as  it 
was  to  Aunt  Fanny,"  Katherine  admitted.  "It  was 
not  as  if  it  had  been  a  novel." 

"Are  you  so  fond  of  novels?"  asked  Paul,  seating 
himself  at  a  respectful  distance,  and  casting  about  in 
his  mind  for  some  favorite  romance  in  which  might  be 
discovered  a  bond  of  sympathy. 

"Oh,  yes;  I  adore  them!  But  I  don't  suppose  you 
have  much  time  for  such  frivolities,"  she  added. 
"  Tell  me,  is  the  work  getting  to  be  very  interesting? " 
— and  even  as  she  asked  the  question  Katherine  wished 
that  she  had  hit  upon  some  lighter  topic.  But  that 
was  the  trouble  with  Paul ;  one  never  seemed  able  to 
think  of  any  indifferent  subject  of  conversation.  And 
as  for  talking  nonsense  with  him,  it  would  be  like 
sparring  with  a  lay  figure ! 

Yet  there  was  little  in  Paul  Stuyvesant's  appearance 
to  suggest  a  lay  figure  as  he  sat,  to-day,  with  earnest 
eyes  fixed  upon  Katherine 's  face,  while  his  sensitive 
high-bred  features  responded  to  every  inflection  of  the 
young  girl's  voice.  As  if  aware,  too,  of  her  mental 
strictures  upon  him,  he  did  his  best  to  answer  lightly. 
He  was  always  trying  not  to  be  oppressive,  and  always 
perceiving  that  he  had  failed. 

"It  has  been  interesting  to  me,"   he  was  saying, 


2 1 2  Katherine  Day 

"although  it  is  a  good  deal  dryer  than  I  used  to 
imagine.  Do  you  remember  how  we  used  to  talk,  you 
and  I,  as  if  a  man  had  only  to  decide  upon  the  study  of 
medicine  to  become  an  immediate  benefactor  of  his 
kind?" 

"How  young  and  foolish  we  must  have  been!" 
Katherine  replied,  evasively.  She  did  not  propose  to 
be  enticed  into  reminiscence. 

"  Were  we?  I  don't  believe  either  of  us  has  changed 
very  much,  though, —  "  and  Paul  picked  up  from  the 
neighboring  table  a  heavy  round  paper-weight  of  clear 
glass,  its  depths  starred  with  pretty,  variegated  de- 
signs. He  was  naturally  unaware  that  this  harmless 
bauble  was  traditional  in  the  family  as  a  cold  resource 
for  embarrassed  lovers;  and  he  was  consequently  far 
from  surmising  how  fervently  Katherine  wished  he 
would  put  it  down. 

On  the  whole,  she  thought,  this  was  perhaps  a  well- 
chosen  moment  for  the  exercise  of  a  little  judicious 
cruelty.  It  really  was  very  bad  for  him  to  build  upon 
being  a  doctor.  She  knew  he  was  doing  so,  and  she 
was  perfectly  sure  that  the  first  thing  he  did  after 
getting  his  degree  would  be  to  ask  her  again.  So  she 
said  in  a  very  matter-of-fact  voice: 

"Do  you  know,  I  have  been  thinking  that  I  don't 
feel  quite  as  I  used  to  fancy  I  did  about  the  medical 
profession.  I  went  up  to  the  cemetery  this  noon,  after 
the  soldiers  had  been  there,  just  to  carry  a  little  pri- 
vate offering  to  one  of  our  Faxon  cousins  who  was 
killed  at  Gettysburg;  and  I  felt  as  if  it  were  a  finer 
thing  to  be  a  soldier — especially  if  you  got  shot — 
than  to  give  pills  and  set  broken  bones." 

Paul  did  not  answer  at  once;  he  felt  hurt  and  baf- 
fled, precisely  as  Katherine  intended  he  should.  But 


Paul  2 1 3 

presently  he  set  the  paper-weight  down,  as  a  sort  of 
half-conscious  indication  that  he  had  got  the  better  of 
himself,  and  observed,  very  simply  and  modestly: 

"I  've  often  wished  that  I  had  been  old  enough  to 
go  to  the  war.  You  know  my  father  was  killed  at 
Bull  Run." 

"Oh,  I  knew  that,"  Katherine  cried,  with  sudden 
penitence.  "  How  could  I  have  set  myself  up  to  feel 
anything  about  soldiers!" 

"  I  Ve  always  been  so  glad,  though,"  Paul  went  on, 
"that,  if  he  was  to  die  then,  it  was  before  the  battle 
was  decided  against  us.  He  fell  in  the  first  charge. " 

This  was  very  disconcerting  to  Katherine, — this 
quiet  reminder  that  the  modest  youth  whom  she  was 
bent  upon  snubbing  possessed  the  one  patent  of  no- 
bility which  she  acknowledged — that  he  was  the  son 
of  a  hero. 

"My  father  was  not  so  happy  as  yours,"  she  said, 
simply,  while  her  thought  closed  with  unspeakable 
tenderness  upon  the  pitiful  tragedy  of  the  old  barn. 
How  obscure,  how  unapplauded  that  ending  had  been, 
with  only  the  barn  swallows  to  ruffle,  with  slight, 
silvery  twitterings,  the  requiem  of  silence !  And  Cousin 
Elmira's  broken  heart!  How  that  intensified  and 
deepened  the  tragedy!  No,  she  could  not  have  this  go 
on  any  longer!  For  Paul's  sake  even  more  than  for 
her  own,  a  stop  must  be  put  to  it. 

"I  often  wish,"  he  was  saying,  "that  I  had  my 
father's  chance.  I  suppose  the  first  thing  a  man  thinks 
of  when  he  can't  have  what  he  wants  is  to  go  and 
fight  somebody," — and  he  gave  a  short,  meaningless 
laugh. 

Katherine  did  not  look  up  from  her  crocheting,  but 
her  attitude  took  no  gentleness  from  the  soft,  woolly 


214  Katherine  Day 

manipulations  of  her  fingers.  The  bend  of  her  neck 
could  hardly  have  been  more  repellent  if  she  had  been 
engaged  in  carpet  making!  As  Paul  glanced  across  at 
her  in  the  sunny  commonplace  of  broad  day,  his  own 
features  assumed  an  answering  hardness  that  was  far 
more  pathetic  than  any  look  of  pain  could  have  been. 
And  when  she  still  kept  silent : 

"  Besides,"  he  added,  bitterly;  "if  I  were  dead  you 
might  like  me  better.  There  would  be  that  advan- 
tage. And  yet ' ' — he  got  up,  and  began  walking  up  and 
down  with  the  futile  stride  of  a  man  in  prison, — for  he 
felt  the  wall  of  her  denial,  inarticulate  though  it  was, 
closing  in  upon  him,  harder  and  more  impassable  than 
stone  and  mortar — "it's  assuming  too  much  to  say 
that  you  would  like  me  better.  You  simply  would  not 
waste  a  thought  on  me  if  I  were  not  by  to  prod  your 
memory. " 

There  was  a  moment's  pause  during  which  the  young 
girl  made  a  valiant  stand  against  her  own  natural 
kindliness.  The  feeling  of  compunction  toward  Paul 
to  which  she  was  always  vexatiously  liable,  was  urgent- 
ly asserting  itself,  but  for  once  it  was  successfully  held 
in  check,  and  he  keenly  missed  the  solace  of  it. 

"I  believe,"  she  was  saying,  thoughtfully,  "that 
you  are  somehow  right  about  it.  And  at  any  rate  the 
prodding  does  more  harm  than  good.  I  never  think 
of  you  without  an  uncomfortable  feeling,  and  we  are 
such  selfish  things  that  we  can't  forgive  people  for 
making  us  uncomfortable." 

"You  are  not  selfish!"  he  protested,  too  loyal  to 
permit  detraction  of  her,  even  at  her  own  hands. 

"You  don't  know  me  very  well,"  she  replied.  "  If 
you  did  you  would  understand  me  better.  You  would 
see  that  there  's  not  the  least  use." 


Paul  2 1 5 

Instead  of  answering,  he  stepped  to  the  table,  and, 
picking  up  the  paper-weight,  which  seemed  to  exercise 
a  fatal  fascination  over  him,  he  began  dropping  it  from 
the  palm  of  one  hand  to  that  of  the  other.  Katherine 
felt  that  this  trivial  incident  gave  the  finishing  touch 
to  an  intolerable  situation.  In  her  effort  to  disregard 
it,  the  crocheting  was  making  phenomenal  progress. 

Presently,  holding  the  glass  to  the  light:  "Curious 
thing,  that!"  Paul  remarked.  "  How  do  you  suppose 
those  unlikely  little  flowrets  ever  got  in  ? " 

"They  must  have  got  in  before  it  was  fired."  She 
was  wondering  what  he  meant  to  spring  upon  her 
with  so  abrupt  a  change  of  subject.  She  knew  his 
thoughts  had  not  wandered  from  the  point; — they 
never  did! 

"You  could  hardly  get  them  out  without  breaking 
it,  I  suppose,"  he  observed,  reflectively. 

"Hardly." 

"  Hm !  That 's  the  way  with  things  that  go  into  your 
very  make-up.  Katherine," — and  still  holding  the 
glass  in  his  hand  he  drew  up  a  chair  and  seated  him- 
self quite  near  to  her — "  Katherine,  did  you  ever  think 
that  I  was  only  making  when  the  thought  of  you  got 
into  me  ?  Just  like  these  little  flowers  here ! ' ' 

But  now  he  was  playing  into  her  hands,  and  she  was 
quick  to  take  advantage  of  the  opening. 

"If  you  feel  that,"  she  answered,  steadily;  "it  only 
ought  to  make  you  understand  me  the  better.  For, 
Paul," — she  had  ceased  working,  that  her  speech 
should  lack  no  emphasis — "you  forget  that  my 
thought  of  you — the  thought  that  it  never,  never, 
never  could  be — entered  into  the  making  of  me.  It 's 
just  as  much  part  of  me  that  I  don't  care  for  you,  as  it 
is  part  of  me  that  I  love  Archie  and  my  father  and — " 


216  Katharine  Day 

with  another  reversion  of  thought  to  a  broken  life — 
"Cousin  Elmira." 

The  clock  on  the  mantelpiece  struck  four,  and 
already  Roland's  hoofs  were  crunching  the  gravel  be- 
fore the  door.  Peter  hated  to  be  kept  waiting;  his 
rightful  mistress  never  did  it.  Katherine  glanced 
rather  pointedly  at  the  clock. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  Paul  said,  laying  the  glass  down 
with  a  gesture  of  dismissal.  "I'm  going  pretty  soon. 
You  may  not  have  to  send  me  away  again  for  a  long 
while." 

"  I  have  n't  sent  you  away,"  she  protested,  "though 
I  know  I  ought  to  have." 

"Katherine,"  he  cried,  suddenly.  "You  may  be 
right.  Perhaps  I  am  doing  myself  an  injury  every 
time  I  come  to  see  you ;  perhaps  I  had  better  keep  away 
for  a  long  time.  But  first,  tell  me, — is  there — is  there 
anybody  else  ?" 

"Anybody  else?  Why,  no!  How  should  there  be?" 

"  Only  that  you  've  been  going  out  this  year,  and — 
I  did  n't  know.  There  are  so  many  fellows  about,  and 
I  thought  there  might  be  somebody  who — had  a  better 
chance  than  I.  Are  you  sure  there  's  nobody  you 
are  even  thinking  of  ? " 

"I  should  hope  not!"  she  protested,  half  amused 
and  half  vexed.  "Because,  one  thing  is  certain, 
there  's  not  a  person  thinking  of  me!" 

As  might  have  been  anticipated,  this  statement  was 
received  without  elation.  If  Katherine  could  have 
said  that  she  had  refused  a  dozen  men,  Paul  would  have 
been  vastly  cheered;  but  this  assertion  that  she  had 
not  been  tested,  incredible  though  it  was,  only  inten- 
sified his  misgivings.  There  seemed  no  comfort  any- 
where. The  poor  fellow  got  upon  his  feet  again  and, 


Paul  2 1 7 

looking  gloomily  forth  at  the  window,  beheld  Roland 
tramping  past  the  door  with  the  long-suffering  Peter. 
The  significance  of  the  side-saddle  was  not  to  be  missed. 

"  I  suppose  you  knew  the  horse  had  been  waiting," 
he  exclaimed,  "and  have  been  longing  to  have  me  go." 

She  too  had  risen,  and  laid  aside  her  work. 

"  Not  on  that  account,"  she  answered. 

The  studied  rudeness  of  the  words  was  so  out  of 
character  that  Paul  pulled  himself  up  sharp.  How 
detestable  all  this  must  be  to  her,  that  it  should  drive 
her  to  such  extremes ! 

He  came  and  stood  beside  her,  searching  her  face 
for  some  least  relenting.  The  hardness  of  her  at- 
titude was  assumed;  that  he  knew — that  did  not 
count.  But  in  the  eyes  that  met  his  for  an  instant, 
in  the  deep  sincerity  of  them,  he  read  at  last  a  rejec- 
tion that  was  more  than  mere  girlish  perversity.  As 
they  wavered,  too,  and  fell,  before  his  dumb  en- 
treaty, while  the  color  slowly  deepened  in  her  cheek, 
he  perceived  that  although  he  could  not  move  her, 
it  was  in  his  power  to  harass  and  pain  her;  and 
his  spirit  rose  against  the  unfairness  of  it. 

Drawing  himself  up  to  his  full  height,  and  looking 
down  upon  her  with  a  sudden  passion  of  renunciation 
that  she  dimly  felt  the  meaning  of,  even  before  he 
spoke : 

"  Katherine,"  he  said, — and  the  quiet  self-mastery  of 
his  tone  was  full  of  dignity, — "  I  have  only  a  word  more 
to  say.  It  is  this.  When  I  don't  come  to  see  you  any 
more,  when  I  stop  prodding,  as  I  mean  to  do  from  this 
time  forth,  don't  imagine  that  it  is  because  I  have 
changed.  I  never  shall.  I  am  like  that  silly  piece  of 
glass  over  there;  the  only  way  to  get  out  the  things 
that  are  in  it  is — to  smash  it. " 


2i8  Katherine  Day 

A  moment  more  and  Paul  was  striding  down  the 
front  steps  and  along  the  path  to  the  street.  He  did 
not  see  Tom  McLean  coming  up  on  horseback,  but 
Tom  saw  him. 

Riding  round  to  the  back  of  the  house  where  Peter 
and  Roland  had  arrived  in  their  resentful  peregri- 
nations, Tom  dismounted  and,  tossing  his  bridle  to  the 
old  man,  he  went  in  by  the  east  door  which  stood  wide 
open.  As  he  sauntered  along  the  passageway,  won- 
dering where  he  should  find  the  family,  he  heard  a  very 
small  sound, like  a  suppressed  sigh — Aunt  Fanny  yawn- 
ing over  her  dull  books  he  surmised.  Another  step, 
and  he  stood  at  the  library  door  gazing  in  blank  aston- 
ishment at  the  figure  of  Katherine,  prone  upon  the  big 
lounge,  crying  as  if  her  heart  would  break.  He  blun- 
dered in,  with  a  vague  idea  that  she  had  bumped  her 
head  or  otherwise  hurt  herself ;  girls  cried  on  such  oc- 
casions, he  believed. 

"Why,  Katherine,  what's  the  matter?"  he  de- 
manded. 

She  jumped  to  her  feet  in  dismay. 

"Nothing,"  she  cried;  "nothing,  really!  I — I  'm 
apt  to  be  weak-minded  on  Decoration  Day;  are  n't 
you?  One  gets  to  thinking  of  the  soldiers,  you  know, 
and  of  people  dying,  and  of  all  kinds  of  tragic  things." 

An  hour  later  they  were  riding  far  out  in  the  country 
between  blossoming  hedgerows  and  ploughed  fields. 
Katherine  had  quite  recovered  her  spirits ;  she  never 
could  resist  the  exhilaration  of  a  horseback  ride.  Tom, 
only  half- approving,  noted  her  high  color;  he  had 
never  seen  it  so  bright.  In  fact  it  was  the  first  time 
the  cousins  had  ridden  together,  for  his  visits  usually 
fell  of  a  Sunday,  and  Grandmother  Day's  principles 
interfered  with  Sunday  rides. 


Paul  219 

At  last — "Who  was  the  man  that  went  out  just 
as  I  came  in?"  he  inquired,  abruptly. 

Katherine's  face  fell. 

"  That?  oh,  that  was  an  old  classmate  of  Archie's — 
Paul  Stuyvesant. — See  if  you  can't  make  your  horse 
trot.  One  gets  tired  of  cantering. " 

"All  right;  only  mine  pounds  badly,  and  my  seat  is 
not  equal  to  yours." 

"  There's  only  one  way  to  learn,"  she  called  gaily,  as 
she  began  rising  lightly  and  rhythmically  to  the 
changed  gait. 

And  Tom,  riding  somewhat  less  gracefully  beside 
her,  was  saying  to  himself:  "That's  the  man,  of 
course.  It 's  just  as  I  thought. "  He  wondered  if  she 
was  in  such  a  taking  merely  because  she  had  been 
obliged  to  say  no.  He  had  not  supposed  her  so  soft- 
hearted. She  had  better  look  out  for  herself  or  she 
would  be  saying  yes,  next  time ! 

Suddenly  a  brood  of  partridges  started  up,  with  a 
rush  and  a  whirr,  almost  under  the  horses'  feet,  and 
Roland  shied,  sharply.  How  well  Katherine  handled 
him,  and  what  an  easy  seat  she  had!  On  the  whole, 
Tom  thought,  she  might  be  trusted  to  hold  her  own — 
lovers  or  no  lovers !  And  at  this  point  in  his  reflections 
it  was  borne  in  upon  him  that  he  rather  liked  riding 
with  Katherine,  and  that  there  would  be  nothing  to 
prevent  his  doing  it  oftener  now  that  the  days  were 
getting  so  long. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CONFIDENCES 

"There  is  a  vision  in  the  heart  of  each 
Of  justice,  mercy,  wisdom,  tenderness 
To  wrong  and  pain,  and  knowledge  of  its  cure." 

AH,  those  rides  through  the  spicy  June  weather, 
far  out  into  the  open  country!  The  rhythmic 
forward  motion,  in  time  to  the  thud  of  hoof-beats ;  the 
casual  talk,  the  friendly  altercation  ending  in  un- 
provoked laughter !  How  the  pleasant  cousinly  good 
comradeship  throve  upon  it  all,  and  how  the  horses 
themselves  entered  into  the  spirit  of  it! 

And  even  when,  with  a  wholesome  fear  of  Peter 
before  their  eyes,  our  young  people  slackened  the  pace 
for  the  last  mile  through  the  gathering  twilight,  soft 
and  fragrant  as  a  hovering  hint  of  incense  in  cathedral 
aisles,  the  talk,  if  often  confidential,  was,  for  that  very 
reason  perhaps,  quite  untouched  by  sentiment.  It 
was  their  opinions  and  their  ambitions  that  they 
discussed,  and  these  stood  out  clear  and  matter-of-fact 
against  the  glamour  of  youth,  as  yonder  white  church 
steeple  against  the  melting  blue  of  the  June  sky. 

Neither  of  them  had  ever  confided  his  aspirations  to 
any  one  else.  That  Tom  wanted  power,  and  that  he 
believed  money  to  be  the  essential  lever,  was  well 
known;  that  much  he  had  confessed  to  Katherine  at 


Confidences  221 

their  first  meeting  after  an  interval  of  several  years. 
But  that  he  should  one  day  apply  his  lever  through  the 
medium  of  a  great  independent  newspaper,  was  some- 
thing he  had  not  yet  confessed  to  friend  or  partner, — 
not  even  to  that  paragon  and  criterion  for  all  women, 
his  incomparable  stepmother.  Neither  had  he  any 
intention  of  taking  Katherine  into  his  confidence — 
this  mere  girl,  indeed,  who  let  silly  men  fall  in  love 
with  her!  But  it  chanced  that  as  they  drew  in  their 
horses  to  a  walk  one  evening  after  a  particularly  exhil- 
arating canter,  during  which  it  had  been  borne  in  upon 
Tom  that  his  seat  was  getting  to  be  almost  as  easy  as 
Katherine 's, — a  pleasant  assurance  which  perhaps 
counted  for  something  in  the  unwonted  expansiveness 
of  his  mood, — the  young  girl  turned  toward  him  a  face 
so  alight  with  the  joy  of  life,  that  a  sudden  impulse 
prompted  him  to  lay  bare  his  mind  to  the  sunshine  of 
hers.  And  yet  he  did  not  speak  at  once,  and  she  it  was 
who  gave  utterance  to  their  common  sentiments,  in 
the  unstudied  ejaculation:  "O  Tom!  Isn't  this 
great!" 

Then,  while  Tom  still  held  his  impulse  in  check, 
there  fell  a  bird  note  from  out  the  bit  of  shadowy 
woodland  they  were  passing, — a  sound  so  search- 
ingly  sweet  that  all  his  reserve  melted  before  it,  and 
he  cried:  "Katherine,  you  asked  me  once  what  I 
wanted  of  power.  I'm  going  to  tell  you." 

"I  know  it  's  something  good,"  she  declared;  yet 
without  elation  at  the  honor  she  was  about  to  expe- 
rience. 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  should  be  so  sure." 

"Well,  lam!" 

Tom  stooped  and  patted  his  horse's  neck — Oliver  he 
had  named  him  out  of  compliment  to  his  cousin's  Ro- 


222  Katherine  Day 

land,  and  little  did  he  care  that  the  big  gray  was 
known  at  the  livery  stable  as  "Baker's  Billy." 

"  I  find  I  'm  not  one  of  those  persons  people  feel  sure 
of,"  he  remarked,  dallying  with  his  subject,  as  if  this 
confidence  were  so  pleasant  a  thing  that  he  did  not 
care  to  hurry  it.  "Oliver  did  not  take  to  me  at  all  at 
first." 

"That  was  before  he  knew  you,"  Katherine  pro- 
tested. "  Besides,  Roland  liked  you  the  very  first  day. 
Don't  you  remember,  when  we  had  dismounted  to 
gather  the  pussies  in  the  swamp,  and  you  put  me  up? 
He  did  not  in  the  least  mind  your  coming  near  him." 

"Really,  Katherine,"  he  jested;  "you  are  alto- 
gether too  flattering." 

"Oh, you  need  n't  be  satirical.  It  only  shows  that 
you  have  less  penetration  than  Roland ;  for  if  you  had 
fathomed  him  as  he  did  you,  at  first  sight,  you  would 
know  what  his  approval  is  worth.  You  should  have 
seen  him  yesterday  when  a  poor  man  ran  out  suddenly 
to  ask  me  to  go  for  a  doctor  for  his  sick  wife.  Roland 
simply  stood  on  his  tail." 

"  Did  you  get  the  doctor? "  asked  Tom,  the  practical. 

"Yes, — but  it  was  no  good.  When  grandmother 
and  I  drove  over  to  inquire  this  morning  the  poor 
woman  had  died.  Her  husband  said  it  was  through 
lack  of  nursing.  Just  think !  If  there  had  been  any  one 
to  take  care  of  her  she  might  have  lived. "  And  Kath- 
erine's  mind  recurred,  as  it  often  did  in  those  days, 
to  the  Life  of  Sister  Dora  which  she  had  recently 
been  reading,  and  which  had  opened  up  a  new  world 
to  her  ardent  young  imagination. 

"  Did  she  leave  any  children? "  Tom  asked. 

"  No;  the  baby  had  died  in  the  winter." 

"Then  of  course,  it 's  not  so  much  matter.     If  she 


Confidences  223 

was  so  awfully  poor  she  must  have  been  glad  to  get  out 
of  it." 

"Ah,  but  you  didn't  see  the  man's  face!"  Then, 
with  a  long-drawn  breath  of  great  eloquence :  "  How  I 
should  like  to  be  a  nurse  and  take  care  of  very  poor 
people ! ' ' 

"Yes,  that  would  be  something  of  course,"  Tom 
assented.  "You  could  help  a  few.  But  nothing  a 
person  can  do  with  his  own  hands  counts  for  much  by 
:he  side  of  what  you  can  make  money  do.  Now  what 
I  mean  to  do  when  I  am  rich," —  Tom  had  not  yet 
learned  to  say  "if" — "what  I  mean  to  do  is  to  go 
down  to  the  root  of  things  and  influence  the  conditions 
out  of  which  individual  suffering  springs.  There  's 
only  one  great  influence  now,  only  one  power  that 
reaches  right  out  into  public  things  that  private  things 
are  built  on;  and  that  is  the  press." 

Katherine  nodded  intelligently. 

"You  don't  of  course  mean  that  you  are  going  to 
edit  a  newspaper  ?" 

"No,  I'm  not  fool  enough  to  mean  that.  And  be- 
sides there  's  no  lack  of  editors.  There  are  plenty  of 
able,  honest  men,  who  could  run  a  newspaper  on  the 
right  lines  if  they  had  the  right  kind  of  a  backer.  I'm 
going  to  be  the  backer." 

"How  splendid!"  she  cried,  with  more  enthusiasm 
than  discrimination.  "And  I  believe  you  '11  do 
it." 

"Oh,  it's  not  such  a  simple  matter  as  you  think!" 
Tom  rejoined,  half  resenting  her  easy  confidence  which 
seemed  somehow  to  belittle  his  ambition, — as  if,  for- 
sooth, it  were  a  thing  in  which  success  might  be  a  fore- 
gone conclusion. 

"  No,  I  suppose  not.      And  I  suppose  I  don't  know 


224  Katherine  Day 

the  first  thing  about  the  difficulties.  But  it  can't  be 
impossible,  or  you  would  n't  undertake  it  ;  and  if  it  's 
not  impossible  I  don't  see  why  it  should  n't  be 
done." 

A  few  minutes  later,  as  they  drew  up  before  the  door, 
Tom  having  sprung  to  the  ground  to  give  her  a  hand  in 
dismounting,  it  chanced  that  Oliver  came  pushing 
after  him,  rather  clumsily,  and  thrust  his  head  against 
his  rider's  shoulder. 

"He  likes  you  now,"  Katherine  laughed,  as  Tom 
elbowed  the  big  beast  away;  and  she  resolved,  then 
and  there,  to  reciprocate  her  cousin's  confidence  one 
of  these  days  when  it  should  come  about  naturally. 
Nor  was  the  opportunity  long  in  arriving;  for  Oliver's 
preference  for  the  roads  about  Camwood  increased  as 
he  knew  them  better. 

A  week  or  two  later  they  were  walking  their  horses 
up  a  long  hill — the  very  hill  up  which  old  Chief  had 
drawn  Charles  Day  and  his  little  daughter  on  that  last 
evening  of  the  master's  life  —  and  they  passed  the 
squalid  little  house  where  the  poor  woman  had  died 
for  lack  of  nursing.  Katherine  had  perhaps  never  be- 
fore ridden  that  way  without  thinking  of  her  father; 
but  to-day  her  mind  was  full  of  the  poor  young  wife 
and  the  desperate  sorrow  of  the  husband's  face.  The 
house  was  closed  now,  or  as  much  closed  as  a  house 
can  be  that  has  neither  blinds  nor  shades  to  shut  it 
in.  One  could  see  through  the  dusty  window-panes 
that  it  was  denuded  of  its  few  poor  sticks  of  furni- 
ture. A  dreary  sight  even  to  one  who  did  not  know 
its  story. 

"That  is  the  house  where  the  man  ran  out  the  other 
day,"  she  said;  "where  the  poor  woman  died  that  I 
was  telling  you  about." 


Confidences  225 

"It  's  just  as  I  thought.  She  was  well  out  of  it," 
Tom  declared. 

"But,  Tom!  they  were  fond  of  one  another;  I  'm 
sure  of  it,  from  the  man's  face." 

"Then  he  must  be  thankful  it 's  over  with. " 

Rough  as  the  words  were,  Katherine  heard,  or 
thought  she  heard,  a  note  of  unconfessed  sympathy. 
And  this  in  turn  touched  her  to  confidence.  So  that  a 
few  minutes  later,  when  they  reached  the  top  of  the 
hill  where  the  view  was,  she  said : 

"Tom,  I  have  never  told  you  what  I  want  to  do  in 
the  world." 

"Well,  I  think  it 's  time  you  did, since  I  opened  up  to 
you  so  handsomely  the  other  day." 

"But  the  trouble  is,  that  it  will  seem  dreadfully 
small  and  contracted  to  you." 

Tom  let  his  eye  wander  over  the  pretty  countryside 
spread  out  below  them  in  the  afternoon  light.  The 
young  stock-broker's  rugged  face  was  capable  of  very 
pleasant  expressions. 

"  I  hope  I  'm  not  so  narrow-minded  as  you  think," 
he  said,  "  though  when  a  man  has  set  his  mind  on  one 
thing  nothing  else  seems  quite  so  real.  But  what  is  it 
you  've  put  up  for  a  target? " 

"I  want  to  be  a  trained  nurse.  Don't  say  any- 
thing yet,"  she  went  on,  giving  a  pressure  to  the 
rein,  which  set  Roland  into  a  leisurely  canter.  "It's 
not  for  the  sake  of  being  professional  or  come-outish 
or  anything,  and  of  course  it 's  not  for  the  money. 
What  I  want  to  do  is  to  get  a  real  training  so  that  when 
I  know  of  anybody  who  needs  nursing, — anybody  who 
can't  afford  to  pay  for  it, — I  can  just  step  in." 

"Do  you  mean  to  go  right  at  it?"  Tom  asked, 
thoughtfully. 


226  Katharine  Day 

"No;  not  yet, — not  just  at  present.  But  I  think 
I  should  like  to  have  that  to  look  forward  to." 

"  I  don't  see  what  you  should  wait  for,"  he  argued, 
"if  you  are  really  in  earnest." 

"Perhaps  I  'm  not  in  earnest,  then,"  she  admitted, 
gently.  "But,  somehow — I  don't  feel  ready  for  it 
yet ;  I  seem  to  want  to  live  a  little  first." 

"Girls  are  so  queer!"  Tom  opined.  "They  think 
they  're  ambitious,  but  they  take  it  out  in  dreaming. 
As  if  it  were  not  living  to  be  working  toward  the  end 
you  're  after!  Now,  when  a  man  wants  anything,  he 
goes  at  it  for  all  he  's  worth." 

"So  does  a  girl,"  cried  Katherine  indignantly. 
"  Lots  of  girls  do!  Any  girl  does  if  there  's  any  hurry 
about  it.  But  there  is  n't  any  hurry  about  this;  it 
will  be  better  for  waiting.  I  wish,"  she  added,  with 
some  asperity,  "I  wish,  Tom,  you  did  n't  feel  so 
superior." 

He  glanced  at  her  defiant  profile,  as  she  sat,  with 
head  thrown  back,  and  shoulders  squared  more  rigidly 
than  good  horsemanship  required.  Yes,  Katherine  was 
something  of  a  spitfire  yet,  and  Tom  retorted,  stub- 
bornly : 

' '  A  man  has  got  to  be  superior  in  some  respects  if 
he  's  to  make  a  success  of  life." 

Katherine  turned  and  looked  him  in  the  face. 

"  Do  you  know,  Tom,"  she  said,  "  I  think  it 's  tempt- 
ing Providence  to  be  so  cock-sure  of  yourself. " 

"As  if  Providence  were  as  vulnerable  as  all  that!" 
he  scoffed.  Whereupon  they  both  laughed,  and 
touched  up  their  horses  to  a  faster  gait,  feeling  all 
the  better  and  the  gayer  for  their  little  passage  at 
arms. 

Roland  and  Oliver  were  so  well  matched  that  even 


Confidences  227 

when  urged  to  their  best  speed  they  still  went  neck 
and  neck,  while  Katherine's  long  riding-habit  and  fly- 
ing veil  streamed  backward  as  habits  and  veils  are  no 
longer  permitted  to  do  in  these  tailor-made  days  of 
ours,  until  Tom  felt  himself  quite  gathered  up  and 
borne  along  on  a  billow  of  floating  draperies  and  manes 
and  tails, — and  again  a  pleasant  expression  settled 
upon  his  countenance. 

And  let  it  not  be  imagined  that  an  occasional  differ- 
ence of  opinion  like  this  acted  as  any  check  to  their 
good  understanding.  On  the  contrary,  they  both  felt 
the  more  assured  of  mutual  comprehension  for  the 
frankness  which  they  could  always  depend  upon. 
Tom  knew  that  Katherine  believed  in  his  great  inde- 
pendent newspaper  as  unquestioningly  as  if  it  had 
already  reached  a  circulation  of  half  a  million ;  while 
she,  for  her  part,  cavalier  as  had  been  his  reception  of 
her  little  confidence,  never  doubted  that  she  could 
count  upon  his  sympathy  and  support.  Indeed,  had 
any  such  doubt  existed,  it  would  have  been  set  at  rest 
by  the  way  in  which  his  mind  continued  to  dwell  upon 
what  she  had  told  him,  some  hours  after  they  had 
ceased  to  discuss  it. 

Tom  had  stayed  to  tea  that  day,  and  in  the  evening 
he  had  begged  for  some  music.  He  had  not  imagined 
that  he  cared  for  music  until  he  had  heard  his  cousin 
play,  but  he  was  beginning  to  think  very  well  of  it  now- 
adays. Moreover,  and  since  his  habit  was  to  get  what 
he  wanted,  he  never  hesitated  to  keep  her  at  the  piano 
as  long  as  he  pleased — which  was  the  more  easy  of  ac- 
complishment, because  there  was  nothing  that  Kath- 
erine better  enjoyed. 

She  played  to  him  a  good  hour  that  evening,  and 
without  the  usual  interruptions — music  being  apt  to 


228  Katherine  Day 

set  Tom  thinking  of  all  sorts  of  unrelated  things 
which  he  found  himself  urgently  moved  to  say.  On 
this  occasion,  however,  he  sat  perfectly  quiet  in  a  dis- 
tant corner  of  the  room,  watching  the  young  girl  as  she 
played,  and  thinking  his  own  thoughts  the  while, 
which,  as  usu?,l,  had  taken  a  practical  turn.  At  last: 

"You  've  not  fallen  asleep,  have  you,  Tom?" 
Katherine  inquired,  letting  her  hands  drop  in  her  lap. 

Scorning  to  notice  the  insinuation,  he  came  over  and 
stood  by  the  piano,  leaning  his  elbows  on  the  lid,  with 
his  chin  in  his  hands. 

"  Play  that  slow  movement  again,"  he  begged,  quite 
without  preamble. 

And  Katherine  played  it  again,  not  in  the  least  dis- 
concerted by  the  intentness  of  the  listening  gray  eyes, 
bent  straight  upon  her;  for,  after  all,  and  though  he 
seemed  rather  stirred  by  the  music,  it  was  only  Tom. 

And  when  she  had  done  his  bidding,  and  done  it 
with  a  touch  that  drew  an  almost  human  tenderness 
from  the  notes : 

"Look  here,  Katherine,"  he  declared.  "I  believe 
you  would  make  a  dandy  nurse.  I  can  tell  it  by  the 
way  you  play  that  thing. " 

And  so  Katherine  knew  that  he  had  been  thinking 
about  what  she  had  said  to  him ;  and  she  knew  also 
that  he  was  on  her  side. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

UNDER    FULL    SAIL 

"Make  for  port, 

Crowd  sail,  crack  cordage!     And  your  cargo  be 
A  polished  presence,  a  genteel  manner,  wit 
At  will,  and  tact  at  every  pore  of  you!" 

IT  was  well  for  Katherine  that  she  had  Tom's  sym- 
pathy, rough  as  it  was,  to  draw  upon  in  those  days 
of  dreams  and  youthful  aspirations ;  for  there  was  lit- 
tle support  to  be  looked  for  from  any  one  else.  Not 
only  were  Archie  and  Winny  far  too  self-absorbed  to 
give  ear  to  visionary  schemes  of  usefulness,  but  Grand- 
mother Day,  herself  a  conservative  by  nature  and  tra- 
dition, was  the  sworn  foe  of  that  worst  of  bugbears, 
"the  new  woman";  and  she  would  warmly  have  re- 
sented any  ambition,  however  laudable,  on  her  grand- 
daughter's part  which  should  seem  to  associate  her 
with  the  regrettable  movement.  That,  indeed,  would 
have  been,  if  anything,  worse  than  Archie's  lack  of 
ambition. 

For  the  old  lady  did  not  for  a  moment  deceive  her- 
self as  to  the  true  inwardness  of  Archie's  sudden  zeal 
for  business.  It  was,  as  she  felt  reasonably  sure,  only 
a  means  to  an  end;  and,  when  the  end  should  be  ac- 
complished, there  would  be  nothing  surprising  in  a 
prompt  abandonment  of  the  means. 


230  Katherine  Day 

The  really  curious  feature  of  the  situation  was  that 
Horace  Gerald,  in  spite  of  a  certain  "horse  sense" 
upon  which  he  openly  prided  himself,  entertained  no 
such  misgivings.  This  unsuspiciousness  may  have 
been  in  large  measure  due  to  the  inferiority  of  his  dis- 
cernment as  compared  to  that  of  his  old  neighbor; 
but  it  was  owing  still  more  to  the  peculiarity  of  his 
own  moral  bias.  In  a  word,  he  was  incapable  of  con- 
ceiving a  point  of  view  in  which  money  considerations 
played  but  a  secondary  part?.  Hence,  from  the  mo- 
ment that  he  knew  Archie  to  be  fairly  launched  upon 
the  pursuit  of  gain,  he  trusted  implicitly  to  the  in- 
herent fascination  of  it  to  keep  him  steady. 

Accordingly,  he  was  not  slow  to  take  his  future  son- 
in-law  into  favor,  and  before  many  months  had  passed, 
the  two  men,  in  spite  of  their  constitutional  dissimi- 
larity, found  themselves  on  a  friendly,  not  to  say  con- 
fidential, footing.  Horace  Gerald,  with  all  his  bluster 
and  apparent  obduracy,  was  by  no  means  unsuscepti- 
ble to  flattery,  and  Archie  had  approached  him  at  the 
point  where  his  defences  were  weak.  Yet,  if  the  boy 
was  instinctively  led  to  play  upon  the  man's  two  most 
patent  foibles, — namely,  vanity  and  cupidity, — it 
must  in  bare  justice  be  admitted  that  his  action  was 
wholly  uncalculating.  Archie  had  quick  perceptions 
and  a  native  persuasiveness  of  manner,  but  he  was  no 
time-server.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  too  much  to  claim  that 
when,  soon  after  the  establishment  of  the  new  firm  of 
McLean  &  Day,  the  junior  partner  went  to  Winny's 
father  for  counsel  in  his  inexperience,  the  step  had 
been  induced  by  any  exceptional  confidence  in  that 
gentleman's  business  acumen.  It  had  been  rather 
from  a  harmless  desire  to  ingratiate  himself  with  one 
who  had,  for  the  moment,  the  upper  hand  of  him. 


Under  Full  Sail  231 

Archie  as  'prentice  in  the  business  had  been  as  docile 
and  unadventuresome  as  the  conservative  Tom  could 
ask;  and  he  had  also  entered  upon  his  partnership 
duly  impressed  with  his  cousin's*  greater  experience 
and  responsibility.  No  one  could  have  been  less  pre- 
pared than  he  himself  for  the  subtle  change  of  attitude 
wrought  by  the  corresponding  change  in  his  situation 
which  gave  him  legal  equality  with  Tom.  From  the 
moment  that  he  found  himself  in  a  position  of  author- 
ity, there  came  new  stirrings  of  ambition  which  he  had 
not  foreseen.  From  desiring  merely  to  bring  about 
his  marriage  by  proving  himself  steady  and  trustwor- 
thy, he  became  eager  to  distinguish  himself  by  some 
brilliant  stroke.  He  had  been  promised  the  consum- 
mation of  his  hopes  in  June  of  the  coming  year.  Who 
could  say  ?  That  brilliant  stroke  that  his  imagination 
had  conceived  might  hasten  things  by  a  good  six 
months.  What  if  there  should  be  a  Christmas  wed- 
ding? The  time  was  favorable  for  sudden  fortunes, 
and  a  stronger  head  than  Archie's  might  well  have 
yielded  to  the  seductions  of  the  hour. 

It  was  a  season  when  the  most  conservative  saw 
signs  of  great  things.  After  seventeen  years  of  green- 
back finance,  specie  payments  had  been  resumed. 
The  government  was  refunding  the  bonded  debt  at  a 
rate  that  insured  large  profits  to  such  brokers  as  had 
the  handling  of  transactions  in  that  line,  and  McLean 
&  Day  were  gathering  their  share  of  the  harvest. 
Under  the  impetus  of  restored  credit  new  enterprises 
were  springing  up  on  every  hand,  among  which  those 
of  legitimate  promise  were  not  easily  distinguishable 
from  the  wildcat  variety,  and  Archie  was  the  man  of 
all  others  to  be  dazzled  by  unsubstantial  visions. 
Indeed,  so  imbued  was  he  with  confidence  in  one  and 


232  Katherine  Day 

another  speculation  of  the  day,  that,  from  taking  coun- 
sel with  Horace  Gerald,  he  presently  found  himself 
proffering  the  same  in  liberal  measure,  and  with  a 
buoyancy  of  assurance  that  beguiled  his  senior  into  an 
almost  equal  faith. 

Flattered,  at  first,  by  the  boy's  preferring  his  advice 
to  that  of  his  legitimate  partner,  Gerald  presently 
found  himself  depending  upon  Archie  for  such  "points" 
as  the  young  stock-broker  believed  himself  to  possess. 
And  Archie,  on  his  side,  was  not  unsusceptible  to  the 
implied  compliment  in  the  elder  man's  attitude  to- 
ward him.  He  had  perhaps  never  come  so  near  a  sin- 
cere liking  for  Winny's  father  as  on  a  certain  summer 
afternoon  when  the  latter  encouraged  him  by  active 
participation  in  a  rather  precarious  venture. 

Archie,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  invested  only 
about  one  half  of  his  private  fortune  in  the  business 
with  Tom,  and  enough  remained  to  offer  a  good  mar- 
gin for  speculation.  It  was  this  alone  which  tempted 
him;  for,  gratifying  and  stimulating  as  he  had  found 
the  new  powers  conferred  upon  him  by  his  partner- 
ship in  the  firm,  it  would  not  have  occurred  to  him  to 
take  advantage  of  it  by  any  act,  overt  or  otherwise, 
in  opposition  to  Tom's  well-known  principles.  It  had 
been  agreed  from  the  beginning  that  McLean  &  Day 
were  not  to  speculate,  and  Archie  felt  himself  to  be 
the  last  man  to  violate  an  agreement. 

Free  as  his  hand  was,  moreover,  where  his  private 
resources  were  concerned,  the  boy  would  have  hesi- 
tated long  before  taking  any  chances  which  might 
involve  the  far  worse  risk  of  his  marriage  again  de- 
ferred. And  it  was  therefore  with  no  little  satis- 
faction that  he  found  his  father-in-law  endorsing  his 
intended  action. 


Under  Full  Sail  233 

'Well,  Archie,"  Mr.  Gerald  had  exclaimed  in  the 
course  of  a  protracted  conference  during  which  the 
splendid  future  of  the  "  Flat  River  Branch  "  had  been 
eloquently  expounded:  "Well,  Archie,  there  doesn't 
seem  much  doubt  that  it  is  a  good  thing,  and  I  am 
glad  to  see  that  you  have  so  much  enterprise." 

"And  you  think  I  should  be  justified  in  selling  out 
of  governments  and  into  '  Flat  River'?" 

"Justified?  If  what  you  tell  me  is  true  I  should 
think  you  would  be  a  fool  if  you  did  n't.  Why,  man! 
nobody  ever  made  a  fortune  without  some  courage. 
'Faint  heart,'  you  know, — eh? " — and  Mr.  Gerald  gave 
the  boy  a  look  of  ponderous  pleasantry. 

How  Archie's  spirits  bounded  at  that!  He  forgot 
that  his  father  had  taxed  this  complacent  adviser 
with  swaggering.  "Faint  heart  never  won  fair 
lady!"  It  would  have  sounded  like  a  joy-bell  from 
the  lips  of  a  less  authoritative  prophet  than  Horace 
Gerald. 

Fired  with  a  sudden  daring,  born  of  rising  hopes, 
the  boy  cried:  "What  would  you  say  to  a  couple  of 
thousand  on  a  margin?  It  wouldn't  be  much  to 
lose,  and  there  would  be  big  chances  in  it." 

Gerald's  eyes  narrowed  curiously.  He  did  not 
answer  at  once.  He  was  taking  counsel  with  himself. 

The  man  had  not  lived  fifty  years  without  acquiring 
ample  knowledge  of  the  dangers  which  beset  the  path 
of  the  speculator.  He  had  seen  more  than  one  fortune 
lost,  he  had  seen  the  disintegration  of  more  than  one 
character  in  the  fatal  alchemy  of  speculative  nos- 
trums. But  because  his  nature  was  a  sordid  and  a 
narrow  one,  because  he  was  concerned  ,  for  nothing 
beyond  the  mere  money  involved,  he  deliberately 
proffered  evil  counsel. 


234  Katharine  Day 

"No,  it 's  not  much  to  lose,"  he  agreed;  "and  the 
chances  are  big.  I  'm  not  sure  that  I  won't  put  up  a 
couple  of  thousand  myself." 

If  Archie  had  been  sanguine  before,  what  wonder 
if  that  which  he  hoped  for  seemed  now  fairly  within 
his  grasp.  As  the  two  walked  together  to  the  family 
sitting-room  the  boy  trod  on  air,  and  again  he  heard 
the  joy-bells  ringing,  audibly  and  riotously.  For  as 
they  came  upon  Winny  herself,  who  had  been  sub- 
mitting with  a  charming,  pouting  tolerance  to  Archie's 
long  absence,  her  father  cried,  in  that  sudden  ebulli- 
tion of  spirits  which  only  the  prospect  of  speedy  en- 
richment was  ever  known  to  arouse  in  him:  "Look 
here,  Winny;  what  should  you  say  to  satin  for  a 
Christmas  wedding?" 

The  young  girl  did  not  reply  directly  to  this  unex- 
pected sally,  but  she  listened,  not  ill  pleased,  to  Ar- 
chie 's  fervent — ' '  O  Mr .  Gerald ! ' ' — and  presently  when 
the  lovers  were  out  in  the  garden  picking  roses  for  the 
supper  table,  she  said  her  little  say.  If  her  utterance 
was  somewhat  meagre  and  grudging  it  seemed  to 
Archie  the  more  adorable  for  that. 

"Yes,"  she  murmured,  holding  out  a  great  creamy 
rose  for  his  admiration,  "I  think  satin  is  the  thing 
for  a  winter  wedding;  it  's  one  reason  I  have  wanted 
it  to  be  at  Christmas." 

The  rose  was  a  beautiful  one,  but  singularly  devoid 
of  perfume. 

"So,  that  is  why  you  like  a  winter  wedding.''" 
Archie  asked,  lifting  the  rose  to  his  face,  but  scarcely 
noting  its  lack  of  fragrance. 

"That  is  one  reason,"  was  the  answer,  given  with  a 
bewitching  blush  and  smile;  for  Miss  Winny  was 
rarely  wanting  in  tact.  And  to  Archie  as  to  Katherine 


Under  Full  Sail  235 

it  seemed  a  beautiful  thing  in  a  young  girl  to  con- 
ceal so  gracefully  her  deepest  feelings. 

Surely  there  was  no  fault  to  be  found  with  Winny. 
She  was  a  perfect  creature  of  her  kind,  as  perfect  as 
the  exquisite,  unfragrant  rose.  And  it  was  to  be  a 
December  wedding  after  all!  The  happy  lover 
blessed  his  uncongenial  father-in-law  for  that  con- 
cession, he  blessed  his  own  good  fortune  in  winning 
him  so  easily. 

And  yet,  and  yet?  What  was  the  hovering  discom- 
fort of  the  boy's  mind?  It  was  not  misgiving  as  to 
the  success  of  their  common  venture;  his  tempera- 
ment was  too  sanguine  for  that.  Neither  was  it  a 
doubt  of  Winny 's  nature,  or  of  her  feeling  for  him, — 
of  such  a  thing  he  would  have  been  incapable.  It 
was, — yes,  it  was — a  curious  sense  of  disloyalty  to- 
ward Tom.  It  was  as  if  he  had  entered  into  a  second 
partnership,  and  as  if,  in  so  doing,  he  had  cast  a  doubt 
on  his  own  integrity. 

It  was  useless  for  Archie  to  tell  himself  that  his  per- 
sonal liberty  was  unimpaired,  that  if  the  partnership 
with  Tom  had  involved  his  individual  freedom  of 
action  he  would  never  have  accepted  it;  much  less 
did  he  find  consolation  in  the  fact  that  he  was  acting 
with  the  approval  and  connivance  of  a  man  of  far 
longer  experience  in  affairs  than  either  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  firm  of  McLean  &  Day.  He  entertained 
no  illusions  about  his  future  father-in-law ;  on  the  con- 
trary, he  was  possessed  of  an  inherited  distrust  and 
distaste  for  the  man,  which  his  recent  intercourse 
had  more  than  justified  and  he  knew  very  well  that 
if  this  new  intimate  of  his  had  not  been  Winny's 
father  he  would  have  given  him  the  widest  kind  of 
berth. 


236  Katharine  Day 

Yet  their  common  risks  did  not  stop  at  the  com- 
paratively trifling  speculation  just  recorded.  Once 
involved  with  Gerald  in  the  game  of  chance,  the  boy 
found  himself  urged  by  his  own  sanguine  tempera- 
ment to  increase  the  stakes.  And  Gerald,  having 
once  conceived  the  idea  that  Archie  had  the  "inside 
track," — encouraged,  moreover,  by  certain  initial 
successes  with  which  a  mocking  fate  delights  in 
dazzling  the  eyes  of  the  gambler, — grew  ever  more 
eager  for  "tips"  and  "pointers"  and  the  like  allure- 
ments of  the  stock  market  which  often  prove  a  bait  as 
disastrous  as  it  is  seductive. 

Horace  Gerald,  with  his  narrow  outlook  and  self- 
important  disposition,  had  thus  far  kept  his  eye  upon 
a  good,  matter-of-fact  main  chance  which  had  served 
him  well.  He  was  real-estate  broker  in  a  small,  safe 
way,  and  he  had  walked  so  steadily  in  the  beaten  path 
of  his  trade  that  he  had  never  yet  been  tempted  astray 
into  any  unlucky  venture.  On  the  other  hand,  un- 
embarrassed, as  he  was,  by  inconvenient  squeamish- 
ness  of  conscience,  he  had  rarely  omitted  to  take 
prompt  advantage  of  his  fellow-men, — such  as  was 
furnished  by  the  great  fire,  for  instance,  which  had 
proved  a  small  bonanza  to  him.  But  while  his  busi- 
ness methods  had  been  consistently  careful  and  ad- 
vantageously unscrupulous,  his  vanity  and  ostentation 
of  character  had  betrayed  him  into  a  good  deal  of 
extravagance,  and  he  had  sometimes  felt  the  pressing 
need  of  a  larger  income.  His  selfishness,  moreover, 
was  of  that  repellent  kind  which  isolates  a  man  among 
men.  Unquestioning  affection  he  had  enjoyed  in  his 
own  home,  from  his  wife,  at  least,  and  unquestioning 
obedience  he  had  exacted  from  his  children,  of  whom 
Winny  was  the  eldest,  but  he  had  perhaps  never, 


Under  Full  Sail  237 

before  his  daughter's  engagement,  been  brought  into 
intimate  relations  with  any  man. 

Gerald  had  little  understanding  of  Archie's  love  for 
Winny,  although  it  would  seem  that  the  child's  like- 
ness to  her  mother  should  have  enlightened  him  on 
that  head.  But  a  love  affair  is  a  two-sided  matter, 
and  Winny 's  mother  had  had  no  such  ardent  and 
idealizing  lover  as  had  fallen  to  Winny 's  lot.  Horace 
Gerald  had  espoused  her  as  he  had  espoused  his  busi- 
ness, with  a  matter-of-fact  calculation  of  the  advan- 
tage involved,  which  was  far  as  possible  removed 
from  Archie's  headlong  surrender  of  himself  to  one 
end  and  aim.  And  thus,  deluded  by  his  own  limi- 
tations, he  accepted  the  boy's  deference  as  a  personal 
tribute  to  himself,  and  was  quick  to  credit  him  with 
an  equally  just  discrimination  in  other  matters.  And 
so  it  came  about  that  Archie  did  gain  a  certain  influ- 
ence over  his  future  father-in-law,  through  which  he 
found  himself  drawn  into  an  intimacy  as  dangerous 
as  it  was  degrading. 

It  never  seemed  so  degrading  as  it  did  one  day  in 
August  when  Tom,  outspoken  as  he  usually  was,  had 
paid  his  partner  a  little  tribute  of  esteem. 

It  had  been  a  busy  day,  and  an  exciting  one,  to 
Archie,  who  had  twice  sent  the  office-boy  with  private 
orders  to  a  neighboring  broker.  Horace  Gerald  had 
looked  in  at  about  eleven  o'clock  to  consult  the  ticker, 
and  had  placed  with  the  firm  a  large  order — on  a  mar- 
gin— for  a  certain  industrial,  to  the  speculative  prom- 
ise of  which  the  market  was  just  waking  up.  He  did 
his  business  through  the  firm,  for  he  was  rather  proud 
of  his  ventures  than  otherwise,  and  he  had  no  objec- 
tion to  having  Tom  McLean  aware  of  the  magnitude 
of  his  operations.  He  also  liked  to  keep  in  the  family, 


^ 

238  Katharine  Day 

as  it  were,  any  commissions  attaching  to  his  own 
transactions, — commissions  which,  in  a  marginal  pur- 
chase, mount  up  proportionally  very  fast. 

At  last  the  ticker  stopped,  the  office  was  deserted, 
and  Archie  sat  at  his  desk,  with  fast-beating  heart, 
figuring  on  a  certain  speculation  of  his  own  which 
chanced  to  be  prospering. 

Tom  came  in,  cool  and  collected  as  if  the  rampant 
stock  exchange  had  been  a  college  lecture-room, 
and  Archie,  resisting  an  impulse  to  slip  his  papers 
into  the  drawer,  looked  up,  remarking:  "Pretty 
lively  over  there,  I  take  it.  " 

"Oh,  so  so!"  was  the  conservative  reply.  Tom 
remembered  Wall  Street  in  '73. 

"McLean  &  Day  have  been  rather  busy,"  Archie 
observed,  copying  Tom's  masterly  moderation. 

"So  it  seems!  Who  's  the  fool  that  's  toying  with 
'  Ingoldsham  ? ' ' 

"Gerald." 

"The  old  man  's  getting  pretty  frisky,  is  n't  he?" 

"Rather." 

"  Hm!  when  he  busts  up  he  may  have  more  use  for 
a  son-in-law, — eh?" 

"He's  got  use  for  one  now,"  Archie  protested. 
"You  know  it  's  fixed  for  December." 

"Oh,  I  remember.  Wish  you  joy!  " — and  Tom 
lighted  his  pipe,  and  fell  upon  his  papers. 

Not  until  then  did  Archie  fold  up  the  sheet  he  had 
been  figuring  on  and  put  it  into  his  inner  pocket.  It 
was  really  time  he  buckled  down  to  his  work  on  the 
books,  for  he  wanted  to  get  off  in  season  to  call  at  the 
florist's  on  his  way  home. 

Presently  Tom  looked  up,  to  find  Archie  drudging 
away  valiantly  at  his  work.  His  cigarette  had  gone 


Under  Full  Sail  239 

out,  and  he  had  not  noticed  it.  Tom  watched  the 
picturesque  head,  bent  over  the  desk.  There  was  a 
certain  grace  and  charm  in  the  very  way  the  hair 
grew;  while  the  native  distinction  of  the  figure  was 
more  apparent  than  ever,  here,  in  the  prosaic  atmos- 
phere of  the  dingy  office.  "It  's  the  social  advantage 
that  tells,"  the  great  stock-broker  had  declared. 

"I  swear  I  believe  it  does  tell!"  Tom  said  to  him- 
self, as  he  thought  of  the  genial  influence  which  his 
partner's  personality  never  failed  to  exercise. 

It  had  been  a  big  day  for  them,  and  how  well 
Archie  managed  his  end;  and  how  steady  he  was, 
after  all!  Good  stuff  he  must  be;  the  Days  were  all 
good  stuff, — perhaps  just  as  solid  as  if  they  had  been 
rough  and  gritty.  Katherine  was  rather  impulsive, 
to  be  sure;  he  often  found  it  necessary  to  exercise  a 
cousinly  restraint  upon  her, — but  Archie;  why,  he 
seemed  steady  as  a  schoolmaster.  Pretty  strong 
team  they  were,  McLean  &  Day!  Presently: 

"I  say,  Archie!"  Tom  cried.  "I  had  no  idea  you 
were  such  a  grind ! " 

"Never  had  anything  to  grind  at  before,"  was  the 
rejoinder;  and  Archie,  perceiving  that  his  cigarette 
had  gone  out,  tossed  it  into  the  empty  grate  and 
lighted  another. 

As  he  picked  up  his  pen  and  fell  to  work  again,  Tom 
regarded  him  with  something  like  compunction.  It 
was  like  seeing  a  light  thoroughbred  harnessed  to  a 
dray.  Jove!  the  man  deserved  a  lot  of  credit!  And 
Tom,  who  did  not  often  indulge  in  such  effusiveness, 
found  himself  exclaiming: 

"Look  here,  Archie;  you  've  turned  out  a  bully 
partner!" 

And  then  it  was  that  Archie  felt  ashamed. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A     SUMMONS 

"He   looked  at  her,  as  a  lover  can; 

She  looked  at  him,  as  one  who  awakes; 
The  past  was  a  sleep,  and  her  life  began." 

TOM  mentioned  to  Katherine  his  good  opinion  of 
Archie,  a  day  or  two  later.  Indeed  he  usually 
gave  her  the  benefit  of  such  reflections  as  were  oc- 
cupying his  thoughts,  for  she  had  come  to  be  his  one 
close  friend.  That  nature  intended  them  to  be  more 
than  friends  would  have  been  patent  to  the  most 
casual  observer, — only  it  happened  that  there  were 
no  casual  observers  to  make  the  discovery.  In  the 
minds  of  those  who  witnessed  the  growing  intimacy 
of  the  two  young  people,  the  fact  of  their  cousinship, 
—though  one  of  circumstance,  not  of  blood, — was  so 
firmly  established,  that  the  obvious  possibilities  of  the 
situation  were  overlooked;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  very  ease  of  intercourse  which  their  relationship 
afforded,  although  it  greatly  furthered  their  knowl- 
edge and  understanding  of  one  another,  had  hereto- 
fore been  lacking  in  those  sudden  revelations  which 
mark  the  rarer  encounters  of  less  familiar  friends. 

Moreover,  and  unlike  as  the  cousins  were,  there  was 
that  in  the  make-up  of  each  which  tended  to  retard 
the  final  apprehension  of  the  truth.  Katherine, 


A  Summons  241 

warm-hearted  and  impulsive,  was  now,  as  in  child- 
hood, an  incorrigible  idealist;  and  Tom,  the  plain, 
straightforward,  everyday  Tom,  was  little  calculated 
to  stir  the  imagination.  He  was  good  to  ride  with, 
good  to  talk  with,  good  to  quarrel  with;  but,  much  as 
he  was  in  need  of  idealization,  there  was  little  in  his  per- 
sonality to  induce  that  beautifying  process.  And  the 
same  hard  sense,  the  same  matter-of-fact  fibre,  which 
forced  upon  others  the  plain  daylight  view  of  him,  was 
unfavorable  to  quickness  of  perception  on  his  own  part. 

Yet  there  was  already  in  Tom's  attitude  toward 
Katherine  a  certain  benign  'tolerance,  a  cousinly  in- 
dulgence, one  might  call  it,  which  amused  and  grati- 
fied her.  She  loved  the  sunshine  of  approval,  and  it 
touched  her  none  the  less  when  it  came  in  intermittent 
rays  from  a  somewhat  chill  and  wintry  sky.  Tom 
liked  to  dispute  what  she  said,  and  then  to  admit  that 
her  fundamental  idea  was  perhaps  well  enough;  he 
liked  to  tell  her  that  Archie  was  not  the  paragon  she 
believed  him  to  be,  and  then  to  electrify  her  by  conced- 
ing pretty  much  everything  she  had  claimed  for  him. 
And  this  he  could  do  in  all  sincerity;  for,  as  we  have 
seen,  Tom  was  most  agreeably  disappointed  in  Archie. 

"What  I  was  afraid  of,"  he  said  to  Katherine,  as 
they  walked  home  from  church  behind  grandmother 
and  Aunt  Fanny  one  August  Sunday, — for  even  to 
such  lengths  had  his  filial  piety  brought  this  model 
grandson, — "what  I  was  afraid  of  was,  that  Archie 
would  want  to  speculate." 

"But  he  promised  not  to,"  Katherine  protested, 
"and  Archie  always  keeps  his  word." 

"Archie's  word  is  not  infallible,"  Tom  declared. 

' '  Wh y  should  you  say  that  ?  Did  you  ever  know  him 
to  go  back  on  it?" 

16 


242  Katherine  Day 

"Yes,  lots  of  times, — just  as  we  all  do,"  he  hastened 
to  add. 

"Nonsense!  You're  just  saying  that  for  effect. 
We  are  not  that  kind  of  a  family ;  we  have  always  been 
people  of  our  word.  You  know  perfectly  well  that 
nothing  would  induce  you  to  break  faith  with  any- 
body." 

"I  don't  know  anything  of  the  kind, because  I  've 
never  been  tested." 

"  Well,  Archie  has,  and  by  your  own  showing  he  has 
stood  the  test.  You  say,  yourself,  he  has  n't  wanted 
to  speculate." 

"No,  he  has  not, — or  rather  he  has  not  proposed 
doing  it.  He  is  really  very  steady ;  and  it 's  a  time  to 
test  a  man's  steadiness.  Why,  do  you  know,  Kather- 
ine, I  am  sometimes  tempted  myself  to  take  a  hand  in 
the  game.  There  have  n't  been  such  big  chances 
since  before  the  war.  But  of  course  I  sha'n't  do  it;  I 
know  there  's  the  devil  in  it." 

Katherine  turned  and  looked  at  her  cousin  in  some 
surprise. 

"Why,  Tom!  "  she  exclaimed.  "I  did  n't  suppose 
you  were  ever  tempted  to  act  against  your  own  judg- 
ment." 

"I  don't  suppose  I  am, — really.  There  wouldn't 
be  much  good  in  toughening  yourself  the  way  I  do  if 
you  could  n't  stand  a  strain." 

"Do  you  really  toughen  yourself? — deliberately,  I 
mean?" 

"  Of  course  I  do!  Life  would  soon  get  the  better  of 
us  if  we  did  n't." 

"I  don't  think  Archie  does  that." 

"  Perhaps  he  is  of  a  better  grain  than  I, — grows  right 
without  trying.  You  're  both  like  that ;  it 's  the  kind 


A  Summons  243 

your  father  was  too,  I  Ve  been  told," — and  he  gave  a 
jerk  of  the  head  toward  the  pleasant,  rambling  old 
house  they  were  passing. 

It  was  Charles  Day's  house,  and  rarely  did  Kather- 
ine  pass  that  way  without  a  glancing  of  memory 
toward  the  past.  The  old  home  had  always  a  dear  fa- 
miliar look ;  the  ineffable  grace  of  tender  associations. 
There  were  the  broad,  low  steps  up  which  Charles  Day 
had  borne  a  damp  little  form  on  that  summer  evening 
so  many  years  ago ;  there  was  the  piazza  where  the 
two  little  girls  had  perched  while  they  prattled  of 
princes ;  the  window  where  Cousin  Elmira  had  leaned, 
ever  plying  her  needle,  though  with  flagging  strength. 
It  was  sometimes  hard  to  believe  that  the  hoof-marks 
on  the  gravel  driveway  were  not  those  of  old  Chief, 
himself  now  gathered  to  his  fathers. 

"Yes,"  Katherine  was  saying;  "Archie  is  of  finer 
grain,  like  father ;  he  always  did  grow  right  as  you  say. 
But  I !  I  Ve  always  gone  stumbling  along,  getting  my- 
self and  other  people  into  trouble." 

"  If  it  were  anybody  else,"  was  Tom's  rejoinder,  "  I 
should  think  you  were  fishing." 

Katherine  laughed. 

"  If  you  were  anybody  else,"  she  retorted,  "  I  might 
be  fishing.  One  does  n't  go  after  trout  in  salt  water." 

"And  yet,  deep-sea  fishing  is  the  only  kind  that  's 
worth  the  line,"  Tom  returned,  quite  ready  to  amuse 
himself  with  a  good,  obvious  metaphor  like  this. 

"I  should  hate  deep-sea  fishing,"  Katherine  de- 
clared. "It  's  so  murderous." 

"  I  fancy  the  trout  would  think  the  chances  of  mur- 
der were  quitekas  good  in  a  brook  as  in  the  sea.  Every- 
thing depends  upon  the  point  of  view." 

They  had  passed  their  grandmother's  gate,  by  tacit 


244  Katherine  Day 

consent,  and  while  Mrs.  Day  and  her  daughter  under 
their  parasols  paced  sedately  up  the  path,  the  young 
people  were  walking  briskly  on,  unmindful  of  the 
strong  midsummer  sun.  Katherine  looked  cool  as 
moonlight  in  her  white  gown  and  hat,  and  the  muffled 
clatter  of  starched  skirts  seemed  quite  to  take  the 
place  of  a  breeze.  Tom,  at  least,  entirely  content  with 
the  situation,  did  not  discover  that  there  was  any 
fault  to  be  found  with  the  meteorological  conditions. 
He  never  dreamed  how  content  he  was,  he  never 
guessed  that  his  very  disputes  with  Katherine  were 
more  truly  a  communion  of  spirit  than  any  intercourse, 
however  beguiling,  that  Fate  might  have  in  store  for 
him, — Fate,  that  stern,  inflexible  goddess,  that  often 
seems  so  at  odds  with  nature.  And  the  cousins  pur- 
sued their  way  in  careless  unconsciousness,  while 
soon  the  conversation  got  back  to  Archie,  a  theme 
of  much  greater  interest  to  both  than  they  had  yet 
divined  in  one  another. 

Yes,  Archie  was  doing  well.  He  was  as  level- 
headed as  even  Tom  could  wish;  and,  in  addition  to 
the  homelier  virtues,  he  had  a  certain  taking  way  with 
him  to  which  even  business  men  were  not  unsuscepti- 
ble. When  Tom  was  absent  on  the  exchange,  he 
knew  the  office  was  in  good  hands.  All  this  he  was 
admitting  to-day  with  unusual  cordiality,  and  Kather- 
ine's  heart  warmed  to  him  for  it. 

"O  Tom!"  she  cried,  as  they  turned  toward  home 
again,  mindful  of  old  Hannah's  uncompromising  punc- 
tuality,— "O  Tom,  I  believe  it  is  going  to  be  the 
making  of  Archie,  being  associated  with  a  man  like 
you!"  « 

"  It  was  rather  a  good  thing  for  him,"  Tom  agreed, 
with  his  usual  candor.  "And  then  the  times  are  lucky 


A  Summons  245 

for  both  of  us.  I  do  think  our  concern  has  as  good  a 
future  as  any  of  the  younger  ones.  I  suppose,  Kath- 
erine,"  he  went  on,  while  a  sudden  bounding  elation  of 
spirits  seized  him,  "I  suppose  that  when  I  've  got 
that  newspaper  going  you  '11  want  me  to  endow  a  hos- 
pital and  put  you  at  the  head  of  it. " 

"Oh,  Archie  will  have  the  first  claim  to  that,"  she 
answered,  with  gay  confidence. 

"Archie!  But  Archie's  going  to  be  married;  he  's 
going  to  have  his  hands  tied.  I  tell  you,  young  lady, 
you  had  just  better  look  to  me  for  anything  you  want." 
— And  the  honest  eyes  sent  her  a  challenge  which  she 
flashed  back  again  with  interest. 

"Very  well;  I  shall  understand  that  I  am  to  have 
anything  I  ask  for." 

"Anything  that  is  for  your  good,"  he  jested. 

"Oh,  but  I  sha'n't  ask  for  anything  for  my  own 
good!  There  '11  never  be  anything  you  can  do  for  my 
good,  only  for  other  people's. " 

"  Don't  you  be  so  sure  of  that,"  cried  Tom;  and,  as 
he  held  the  gate  open  for  her,  and  the  white  draperies 
rustled  past,  he  was  conscious  of  a  peremptory  desire 
to  make  her  want  something,  to  force  upon  her  accep- 
tance a  bestowal  of  some  kind  which  she  should  not  be 
able  to  refuse.  He  strode  after  her,  and  was  on  the 
point  of  pressing  the  subject,  in  his  own  rough  way, 
when  she  turned  to  him  with  a  disarming  gentleness. 

"What  a  foolish  thing  I  said  just  now!" — and  her 
voice  was  as  soft  and  warm  as  the  summer  air.  "As 
if  we  were  not  always  accepting  the  very  best  things 
from  people  we  are  fond  of,  even  when  they  are  rather 
high-handed  about  it!  And,  O  Tom!  nobody  ever 
made  me  happier  than  you  haVe  to-day ! ' '  And  as  they 
reached  the  foot  of  the  steps,  she  held  out  her  hand  to 


246  Katherine  Day 

him  with  a  grace  of  gesture  which  the  admired  Winny 
herself  could  never  have  compassed — perhaps  because 
Winny  would  have  tried  for  it.  Katherine,  indeed, 
was  nothing  if  not  spontaneous,  whether  for  good  or 
ill,  and  Tom  took  the  proffered  hand  quite  in  the 
cousinly  spirit  in  which  it  was  extended. 

For  if  there  were  moments  when  these  two  young 
people  seemed  on  the  verge  of  the  one  great  discovery, 
they  were  but  fleeting  moments,  and  the  old  familiar 
relation  readjusted  itself  so  immediately  that  the 
break  was  scarcely  perceptible.  In  so  much  that 
when,  a  month  later,  Tom  was  asked  to  pass  a  Sep- 
tember Sunday  at  the  seashore  with  Aunt  Anne  and 
Uncle  Theodore,  it  was  with  little  conscious  quicken- 
ing of  interest  that  he  learned  that  Katherine  was  to 
be  there  too.  Yet  if  the  circumstance  added  no  agi- 
tating zest  to  his  anticipations,  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
nothing  could  have  contributed  more  to  the  pleasure 
of  the  actual  experience. 

The  Glynns  had  a  delightful  place  on  what  is  known 
as  the  South  Shore;  a  homely,  comfortable  cottage, 
made  for  everyday  use,  and  standing  on  a  rocky 
tongue  of  land  so  close  to  the  sea  that  the  great  storm 
tides  were  supposed  to  wash  the  foundations  of  the 
house.  The  chief  ornament  of  this  unpretentious 
establishment,  next  to  Aunt  Anne,  was  the  bevy  of 
children  of  assorted  sizes  who  gambolled  about  the 
place  and  shouted  defiance  to  the  breakers. 

Children  had  never  interested  Tom  particularly, — in 
fact  he  had  hitherto  enjoyed  but  slight  acquaintance 
with  them, — and  at  first  he  rather  resented  the  man- 
ner in  which  these  small  cousins  swarmed  about  Kath- 
erine. He  found,  however,  that  their  attentions 
were  intermittent;  that  after  three  highly  dramatic 


A  Summons  247 

renderings  of  the  story  of  The  Little  Rid  Hin  they  were 
quite  ready  to  turn  to  other  joys,  and  meanwhile  he 
had  had  the  opportunity  of  remarking  how  becoming 
Katherine  was  to  them.  Their  little  faces  as  they 
clustered  about  her  with  wide-eyed  delight  in  the  nar- 
ration, their  little  hands  as  they  clung  to  her  dress,  or 
pulled  at  her  sleeve,  their  young  voices  as  they  cried: 
"Oh  please,  Cousin  Katherine,  please  tell  it  once 
more!" — all  this  pretty  byplay  was  a  revelation  of 
childish  grace,  and  of  eager,  happy  child-life  that 
struck  him  for  the  first  time.  Yes,  Katherine  was 
very  becoming  to  them,  he  thought,  and  they  really 
were  nice  little  things,  and  never  nicer  than  when 
they  scampered  off  to  build  a  fort  in  the  sand. 

"Katherine  does  understand  children  so  well," 
Aunt  Anne  remarked,  when  her  niece  had  gone  up- 
stairs to  get  ready  for  church.  "  I  often  wonder  if  it 
is  because  she  had  such  a  dreary  time  of  it  when  she 
was  a  little  girl." 

"  You  mean  with  that  old  cat  Cousin  Elmira? "  Tom 
inquired. 

"Yes, — and  with  the  rest  of  us  too,  I'm  afraid, 
though  I  never  thought  much  about  it  until  I  had 
children  of  my  own.  I  used  to  suppose  that  she  was 
as  well  off  as  a  child  need  be." 

"  Imagination  was  never  your  strong  point,  Anne," 
her  husband  remarked,  with  a  kindly  indulgence  that 
had  no  sting.  "  Now,  Katherine  is  full  of  it.  And  so 
she  knows  how  to  make  the  children  happy, — as  she 
does  the  rest  of  us!" — for  Uncle  Theodore  was  still 
a  great  admirer  of  Katherine's. 

And  Tom  found  himself  wondering  whether  there 
might  not  be  something  in  that  theory.  Why,  of 
course!  that  must  be  why  he  himself  enjoyed  his 


248  Katharine  Day 

cousin's  society  so  well.  He  had  imagined  that  it  was 
only  because  she  was  good  as  a  boy.  But — come 
to  think  of  it — there  was  no  boy,  no  man,  whose  society 
he  cared  so  much  about.  It  looked  almost  as  if  she 
might  be  even  better  than  a  boy.  The  mere  sugges- 
tion gave  him  quite  a  turn. 

Tom  did  not  go  to  church  that  day,  but  he  did  not 
for  a  moment  imagine  that  it  was  because  his  uncle 
was  sure  to  walk  with  Katherine.  Instead,  he  went 
and  climbed  some  very  steep  and  dangerous  rocks, 
where  a  misstep  would  have  been  fatal  to  that  great 
newspaper  enterprise  he  had  so  close  at  heart ;  and  so 
satisfactory  was  the  sense  of  difficulties  overcome, 
that,  late  in  the  afternoon,  after  they  had  had  their 
swim,  he  invited  his  cousin  to  risk  her  neck  on  the 
same  perilous  path. 

Katherine  was  as  sure-footed  now  as  in  the  days  of 
her  childhood,  and  now,  as  then,  the  Lord  seemed 
ready  to  preserve  her, — "to  some  good  end,  let  us 
hope;  to  some  good  end."  She  loved  to  feel  her  way 
up  a  cliff-side,  to  find  small  jags  and  notches  for  her 
feet,  to  discover  providential  projections  just  where 
her  fingers  must  cling.  She  delighted  in  that  tentative 
pause,  as  she  tested  a  questionable  support, — the 
sense  of  daring  with  which  she  trusted  it.  She  liked 
to  feel  herself  mounting  ever  higher  above  the  safe 
beach,  braving  an  eminence  where  a  misstep  must 
mean  disaster.  Yet  if  fear  was  a  stranger  to  her  mind 
the  perception  of  danger  was  nevertheless  keen  enough 
to  quicken  her  pulse  and  stir  her  imagination.  And 
so  it  was  with  a  great  exhilaration  of  spirits  that  she 
finally  set  foot  on  top  of  the  cliff's  broad  summit, 
and  stood  there  with  Tom  looking  across  the  wide 
sea. 


A  Summons  249 

It  was  a  glorious  September  sea,  sparkling  and  toss- 
ing as  if  from  sheer  joy  of  itself.  The  feel  of  it  an  hour 
ago  had  been  like  the  feel  of  a  great  living  power, — 
vitalizing  as  the  sun  and  the  air. 

Katherine  was  an  accomplished  and  fearless  swim- 
mer, and  she  and  her  Uncle  Theodore  had  ventured  far 
out  beyond  the  breakers,  where  they  had  rocked  and 
dipped  with  the  slow,  elemental  motion  of  the  great 
deep.  Tom  had  pressed  them  hard,  for  he  too  was  an 
expert  swimmer,  as,  indeed,  he  was  bound  to  be,  with 
his  broad  chest  and  his  powerful  neck  and  arms.  It 
was  the  first  time  he  had  seen  Katherine  swim, 
and  his  feeling  had  been  a  mixed  one.  It  was  fine,  of 
course,  but  was  it  not  a  bit  mortifying  too?  Where 
was  a  man  to  show  his  superiority, — an  essential  attri- 
bute of  the  manly  character,  as  any  one  must  admit, 
—if  not  in  just  these  out-of-door  sports  where  muscle 
carries  the  day.  As  he  glanced  across  the  sea  the 
thought  of  his  cousin's  athletic  prowess  came  back  to 
him,  and  at  the  sound  of  her  voice,  he  turned  toward 
her  half  in  resentment. 

"Let  us  sit  here  and  rest,"  she  proposed,  dropping 
lightly  upon  a  natural  shelf  of  rock  near  the  edge  of 
the  cliff;  and  then,  clasping  her  knees,  with  a  sigh  as 
for  a  feat  accomplished:  "That  was  something  of  a 
climb,  wasn't  it?" 

"  I  should  think  it  must  have  been, — for  you,"  Tom 
admitted,  his  complacence  quite  restored.  "Of 
course  it  did  n't  seem  to  me  like  much." 

"I  think  I  never  knew  any  one  quite  so  strong  as 
you,"  Katherine  opined,  gravely!  "It  made  you 
quite  a  hero  to  my  mind — long  ago,  when  we  were 
children." 

"I  believe  I  have  got  pretty  good  staying  power," 


250  Katherine  Day 

Tom  agreed;  "better  than  any  girl  of  course.  But 
somehow  you  seem  to  get  there,  just  the  same. " 

"Perhaps; — but  sometimes  there  isn't  much  left 
over.  It  's  you  who  always  seem  to  have  a  surplus." 

And  now  Tom  could  afford  to  be  magnanimous. 

"By  the  way,  Katherine,"  he  remarked,  throwing 
himself  down  on  the  broad  space  at  her  feet,  and 
spreading  his  hands  palm  downward,  on  the  warm 
rock  surface.  "I  don't  wonder  you  have  a  fellow 
feeling  with  the  deep-sea  fish;  you  're  something  of 
a  one  yourself." 

"  Oh,  you  mean  I  can  swim.  I  suppose  it 's  because 
I  always  loved  it." 

"I  heard  about  it  the  other  day,"  Tom  continued, 
"but  I  supposed  you  just  swam  pretty  well  for  a 
girl." 

"Who  told  you?" 

"Why,  that  medical  friend  of  Archie's, — Stuyve- 
sant,  is  n't  it?  He  was  in  at  the  office  after  hours  the 
other  day,  and  Archie  was  bragging  about  your  swim- 
ming. Stuyvesant  did  n't  say  much,  but  somehow 
he  managed  to  convey  the  impression  that  you  could 
give  a  mermaid  points!  " — and  Tom  glanced  up  to  get 
the  effect  of  his  words. 

A  look  crossed  the  girl's  face  that  puzzled  him.  It 
was  not  a  blush,  and  no  one  could  deny  that  a  blush 
was  what  the  moment  called  for;  indeed,  it  seemed 
almost  improper  that  it  should  be  lacking.  He  would 
try  again. 

"Besides,  I  supposed  Stuyvesant  was  not  altogether 
unprejudiced." 

But  Katherine  was  not  to  be  so  easily  caught. 

"No,  I  don't  suppose  he  is,"  she  replied,  tranquilly. 
"  He  is  always  pretty  partial  where  Archie  is  concerned 


A  Summons  251 

or  Archie's  belongings."  She  had  not  seen  Paul  again 
all  summer,  and  she  was  feeling  very  easy  about  him. 

Tom  was  nettled.  He  had  told  Katherine  all  his 
secrets ;  why  should  she  be  so  thundering  close  about 
hers?  He  had  not  yet  arrived  at  that  stage  in  his  de- 
velopment where  he  could  appreciate  that  there  are 
secrets — and  secrets. 

Resting  the  back  of  his  head  in  his  clasped  hands, 
he  looked  her  full  in  the  face. 

"On  the  whole,  Katherine,"  he  remarked,  lazily,  yet 
with  a  sudden,  irrational  desire  to  be  exasperating: — 
"I'm  rather  glad  you  did  n't  have  him.  I  think 
you  're  nicer  as  you  are!" 

Katherine  sprang  to  her  feet  too  angry  to  speak; 
the  flaming  indignation  of  her  face  was  deeper  than 
any  blush  could  have  been.  If  only  she  could  have 
thought  of  words  scathing  enough  to  characterize  this 
clumsy  impertinence ! 

But — "Cousin  Tom,"  came  a  child's  voice  on  the 
land  side  of  their  cliff,  "Cousin  Tom!"  and  turning, 
Tom  beheld  ten-year-old  Teddy  climbing  toward 
them  with  a  yellow  telegram  held  high  above  his  head. 
The  ascent  on  that  side  was  easy  enough, — just  a 
grassy  slope  with  occasional  juttings  of  rock  to  be  got 
over.  How  like  Tom  it  had  been  to  take  Katherine 
the  difficult  way! 

Tom  walked  toward  the  child  and  opened  and  read 
the  telegram ;  after  which  he  took  a  time-table  from  his 
pocket,  and  glanced  quickly  at  the  Sunday  trains. 
The  message  was  a  summons  from  his  stepmother; 
Dr.  McLean  had  had  a  stroke  of  paralysis,  and  Tom 
was  to  come  at  once.  He  lifted  his  eyes  to  Katherine, 
still  standing  stiff  and  defiant,  gazing  with  studied  un- 
concern out  to  sea. 


252  Katherine  Day 

"Teddy,"  he  commanded,  "show  the  telegram  to 
your  mother,  and  tell  her  I  shall  take  the  six  o'clock 
train." 

As  the  child  trotted  off,  full  of  importance,  Tom 
again  looked  toward  Katherine.  She  had  not  changed 
her  attitude  one  inch. 

His  father  had  had  a  stroke.  Yes,  that  was  very 
tragical,  and  bye  and  bye  he  should  be  able  to  take  in 
the  fact.  But  now — now, — he  was  conscious  only  of 
a  curious  resentment  at  being  cheated  out  of  some- 
thing he  had  a  right  to.  He  had  not  known  that  he 
cared  so  particularly  for  this  little  holiday  with  Kather- 
ine ;  he  would  not  have  supposed  that  he  should  have 
minded  having  it  shortened;  and  even  now  he  did  not 
know  how  precious  was  this  thing  that  was  slipping 
through  his  fingers.  He  only  knew  that  he  was  being 
defrauded  of  his  rights.  He  was  clearly  entitled  to 
another  good  hour  in  which  they  could  have  adjusted 
their  quarrel  and  made  friends  again ;  and  here  he  was, 
with  scarcely  ten  minutes'  grace. 

He  walked  slowly,  sullenly,  up  the  slope;  but  she  did 
not  turn  at  his  approach.  He  stood  a  moment  by  her 
side,  and  then  he  said,  in  rather  a  hard,  indifferent 
voice,  "You  may  be  interested  to  know,  Katherine. 
that  my  father  has  had  a  stroke,  and  I  've  got  to  go  to 
him." 

The  effect  of  the  words  was  transforming;  it  was  as 
if  she  had  become  another  creature.  The  lines  of  her 
form  relaxed,  and  she  turned  toward  him  a  face  from 
which  the  flush  of  anger  had  not  yet  died  out,  but 
seemed  rather  translated  into  a  wonderful  glow  of 
sympathy  and  comprehension. 

"O  Tom!"  she  cried,  "0  Tom.  I  'm  so  sorry!" 
There  was  a  fall  in  the  voice  that  made  the  com- 


A  Summons  253 

monplace  words  strike  home,  touching  a  chord  in 
him,  that  had  never  been  stirred  before.  Docile 
to  the  hand  that  waked  it,  it  vibrated  first  to  the 
emotion  of  pity  for  his  father's  hard  strait,  grief  for 
himself. 

"Poor  old  boy,"  he  murmured, — and  the  words 
were  low  and  very  tender:  "Poor  old  boy!  It  's  an 
awful  blow!" 

"Oh,  I  know,  I  know!"  Katherine  cried.  There 
was  consolation  in  the  unsought  words — a  consola- 
tion that  he  felt  the  need  of  for  the  first  time  in  all  his 
busy,  unsentimental  life. 

The  leave-taking  was  a  hurried  one,  but  there  was 
yet  a  moment  —  a  moment  on  the  veranda,  just 
before  the  carriage  drove  up  —  when  the  cousins 
were  alone  together. 

"Katherine,"  Tom  cried,  with  something  of  his  old 
rough  bluntness,  penetrated,  however,  with  an  incon- 
gruous note  of  feeling,  "  Katherine,  I  was  a  horrible 
cub  up  there  on  the  rocks." 

"  Oh,  but  what  is  all  that  now?  How  could  we  ever 
think  of  it  again ! ' ' 

"Oh,  I  can  think  of  every  single  thing,"  he  an- 
swered, "clearer  than  ever  I  did  before.  I  had  no  idea 
your  mind  worked  so  smoothly  when  things  are  crash- 
ing through  you.  I  know  now  why  I  was  so  ugly.  I 
was  just  a  dog  in  the  manger;  I  wanted  to  keep  you 
to  myself ! ' '  and  now  Tom's  own  voice  vibrated  to  that 
chord  that  had  never  been  stirred  before. 

As  the  carriage  drove  ups  and  the  rest  of  the  family, 
down  to  little  Sally,  came  trooping  out  on  the  ver- 
anda, Katherine  stood  among  them,  bewildered  and 
ashamed, — ashamed  of  the  sudden  selfish  confusion 
that  seized  her  mind  at  such  a  moment. 


254  Katherine  Day 

"Good-by,"  they  called,  while  Tom  and  his  uncle 
took  their  seats  in  the  carriage.  "Goodby,  Cousin 
Tom,"  piped  the  children's  voices,  and  "Good-by," 
Tom  called  back,  as  the  carriage  rounded  the  curve 
where  the  pine  trees  began.  "  Good-by,  Katherine ! " 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  DOG  IN  THE   MANGER 

"  Because  a  man  has  shop  to  mind 

In  time  and  place,  since  flesh  must  live, 
Needs  spirit  lack  all  life  behind, 

All  stray  thoughts,  fancies  fugitive, 
All  loves  except  what  trade  can  give?" 

KATHERINE  DAY  had  often  had  cause  to  chide 
herself  for  faults  and  blunders  which  she  found 
it  difficult  to  condone,  but  she  had  perhaps  never  re- 
garded herself  with  such  severe  disapproval  as  now. 
Her  actions  had  frequently  been  reprehensible;  but 
her  feeling,  the  fundamental  integrity  of  her  feeling, 
had  never  before  been  shaken.  What  was  it  that  had  so 
suddenly  disturbed  her  equilibrium?  Whose  were  the 
words  that  had  wrought  such  havoc  in  her  mind  ?  This 
she  asked  herself  a  hundred  times  in  the  days  that  fol- 
lowed. What  was  Tom  McLean, — she  demanded  of 
her  abject  and  bewildered  spirit, — what  was  he,  that 
the  thought  of  him  should  have  entered  into  her  soul 
and  possessed  its  secret  places? 

And  indeed,  leaving  heroics  out  of  the  text, — 
though  never  were  they  wholly  left  out  of  a  young 
girl's  first  overwhelming  self-discovery, — could  any- 
thing have  been  more  vexatious  than  this  usurpation 
of  the  authority  reserved  for  the  prince  of  a  maiden's 
dreams  by  an  unromantic  cousin,  rough  and  dicta- 


256  Katherine  Day 

torial  and  worldly  minded  ?  Was  it  for  this  that  she 
had  had  visions  of  a  useful,  independent  life?  Was  it 
for  this  that  Paul,  the  faithful,  the  devoted,  the  alto- 
gether superior  Paul,  was  wearing  his  heart  out  for 
her?  She  summoned  Tom  into  damaging  contrast. 
A  dog  in  the  manger!  Yes,  that  was  just  what  he 
was!  He  was  grasping,  he  was  acquisitive, — hateful 
word  that  she  had  once  heard  applied  to  Winny's 
father,  whereupon  she  had  been  filled  with  pity  for 
Winny! 

A  dog  in  the  manger!  That  was  a  fine  compliment 
he  had  paid  her  indeed !  Yet,  even  as  she  tried  to  hold 
the  little  scene  at  arm's  length,  and  to  analyze  it  into 
insignificance,  her  very  soul  vibrated  to  the  memory  of 
Tom's  face,  to  the  memory  of  his  voice,  as  he  said: 
"  I  wanted  to  keep  you  to  myself ! ' '  She  knew,  and  he 
knew — ah!  he  surely,  surely  knew, — that  they  had 
stood  face  to  face  for  the  first  time,  but  not  the  last, — 
oh,  not  the  last !  It  was  coming, — this  great  incredible 
thing  that  came  to  other  girls.  It  was  coming, — 
rudely,  imperatively,  uncompromisingly,  with  none 
of  the  soft  seduction,  none  of  the  insinuating  gentle- 
ness, that  should  beguile  a  maiden's  fancy. 

All  this  conflict  of  spirit  was  a  matter  of  many  days ; 
days  of  such  emotional  disturbance  as  to  be  incompre- 
hensible in  one  of  a  less  spontaneous  impressionable- 
ness.  But  it  was  not  in  Katherine 's  nature  to  evade  a 
conviction,  to  dally  with  a  real  thing.  As  her  idealism 
often  blinded  her  to  the  shortcomings  of  her  friends, 
so  the  absence  of  idealization  had  hitherto  blinded  her 
to  the  true  affinity  of  nature  which  existed  between 
herself  and  her  cousin.  Yet,  when  once  the  time  was 
ripe,  it  needed  but  a  touch,  a  word,  to  waken  her  to 
a  vivid  perception  of  the  real  thing.  She  fought 


The  Dog  in  the  Manger  257 

against  it,  she  strove  to  overcome  it,  but  she  never 
flinched  from  its  recognition. 

She  was  shocked  to  find  how  little  concern  she  felt 
for  Dr.  McLean's  condition,  for  Tom's  threatened  be- 
reavement. Even  as,  at  first,  when  her  cousin  had 
asked  pardon  for  his  rudeness,  she  had  put  it  to  one 
side  as  of  no  account  in  face  of  an  impending  sor- 
row,—  so  now  the  menace  at  the  hands  of  death 
seemed  remote  and  unimportant  compared  to  this  yet 
more  imminent  menace  at  the  hands  of  life. 

She  had  hurried  to  her  own  room  after  Tom's  de- 
parture,— his  "Good-by,  Katherine,"  still  sounding 
in  her  ears, — and  she  had  changed  her  dress  for  supper 
with  a  feverish  haste  that  very  much  prolonged  the 
operation.  She  kept  telling  herself  how  sorry  she  was 
for  Tom,  how  she  hoped  he  would  find  his  father  re- 
covering, how  terrible  it  would  be  if  the  patient  should 
really  die, — and  all  the  time  she  was  remembering 
what  he  had  said  about  the  dog  in  the  manger,  and 
trying  not  to  remember  what  he  had  said  after  that. 
At  last,  as  she  tied  the  fluttering  ribbon  of  her  belt, 
something  gave  way  in  her  resolution,  and  her  mind 
was  once  more  invaded  with  the  very  tone  of  Tom's 
voice,  as  she  had  heard  it  say:  "I  wanted  to  keep 
you  to  myself!" 

In  sudden  revolt,  she  pulled  a  hard  knot  in  the  rib- 
bon, and,  heedless  of  an  entrancing  sunset  beckoning 
at  her  chamber  window,  she  hurried  down  the  stairs 
to  the  big  library  which  looked  toward  the  sea.  There 
was  a  faint  reflection  of  glory  in  the  eastern  sky,  but 
the  lamps  were  just  lighting  and  nobody  heeded  it. 

" O  Cousin  Katherine!  you  're  just  in  time  to  tell  us 
a  story   before   bed,"   cried  a  chorus  of  children's 
voices. 
17 


258  Katherine  Day 

"And  what  shall  it  be?"  she  asked,  gladly  wel- 
coming the  diversion,  and  joining  the  children  in 
their  special  corner,  far  as  possible  removed  from  the 
book-reading  elders. 

"  The  Little  Rid  Hin!"  cried  the  small  Sallie,  who 
preferred  a  good  familiar  tale  with  thrills  by  much  re- 
iteration rendered  innocuous. 

"Oh,  no!"  Teddy  protested.  "We  had  that  three 
times  this  morning.  Let  's  have  an  Indian  story!" 

"Oh,  I  hate  Indians,"  cried  Nannie,  a  vivacious 
little  person  with  a  mind  of  her  own.  "Tell  us  an 
animal  story, — please,  Cousin  Katherine!" 

"Let  me  think,"  Katherine  pondered;  "what  kind 
of  an  animal  shall  it  be  about?"  Then,  in  sudden 
defiance  of  herself:  "Oh,  I  have  it!  I  '11  tell  you  the 
story  of  The  Dog  in  the  Manger! ' ' — and  she  was  sur- 
prised to  find  with  what  equanimity  she  was  bearding 
her  lion  or  his  unmannerly  canine  equivalent. 

"Sounds  like  a  Christmas  story,"  quoth  Teddy, 
rather  doubtfully ;  he  liked  all  things  in  their  season. 

"  Oh,  it  's  not  a  Christmas  story;  it  's  just  an  every- 
day kind  of  one,  good  for  any  day  of  the  year, " — and 
Teddy,  reassured,  mounted  the  arm  of  a  neighboring 
chair,  and  prepared  for  a  canter  into  the  land  of  make- 
believe. 

"  I  'm  afraid  the  dog  in  the  manger  was  not  a  very 
nice  kind  of  dog,"  the  storyteller  began,  while  she  ab- 
sently disengaged  Sallie 's  fingers  from  her  watch 
chain; — for  Sallie,  who  appeared  to  regard  the  human 
form  as  a  species  of  migratory  furniture,  had  promptly 
established  herself  in  her  cousin's  lap. 

"What  kind  of  a  dog  was  he?"  asked  Jack,  the 
elder  of  the  two  boys,  who  sat  on  the  floor  with  his 
setter  pup  spread  genially  across  his  person. 


The  Dog  in  the  Manger  259 

Katharine  considered  a  moment,  while  her  mind 
just  grazed  the  thought  of  Tom. 

"  I  believe  he  was  a  mastiff,"  she  ventured. 

"A  full-blooded  one?"  asked  Jack,  with  the  interest 
of  a  budding  connoisseur. 

"Oh,  yes!" 

"Then  he  was  all  right!  There  ain't  any  flies  on  a 
full-blooded  mastiff." 

"There  were  plenty  of  flies  on  this  one,"  Katherine 
laughed,  "for  he  lived  in  a  stable.  He  used  to  lie  in 
a  manger." 

"  But  a  mastiff  could  n't  get  into  a  manger,"  Jack 
objected. 

"But  this  one  did." 

"Perhaps  it  was  an  unusually  large  manger,"  sug- 
gested Nannie,  "or  an  unusually  small  mastiff." 

"There  was  nothing  small  about  the  mastiff,"  Kath- 
erine protested,  "although  he  may  not  have  been  full 
grown.  But  he  was  pretty  big  and  pretty  powerful, 
and  he  would  n't  let  anybody  touch  the  feed." 

"But,  of  course,  he  didn't  eat  it  himself,"  cried 
Jack. 

"No;  that  was  just  what  wasn't  nice  about  him. 
He  did  n't  want  it  himself,  and  he  would  n't  let  any- 
body else  have  it." 

"  I  guess  the  one  it  belonged  to  hadd't  come  along," 
said  a  small  voice  from  behind  Katherine 's  chair,  and 
a  pair  of  little  hands  that  had  been  resting  on  the 
storyteller's  shoulders  came  round  and  clasped  them- 
selves under  her  chin. 

"Hullo,  Louliekin!"  Katherine  called,  in  feigned 
surprise.  "You  there?" 

"  Is  that  all  the  story  there  is? "  asked  Nannie,  mak- 
ing no  effort  to  conceal  her  disappointment. 


260  Katherine  Day 

"I  'm  afraid  it  's  all  I  know,"  Katherine  confessed, 
amazed  to  find  that  invention  failed  her. 

"  I  don't  call  it  very  much  of  a  story,"  said  Teddy. 
"  I  think  it  's  about  the  poorest  one  you  ever  told 
us." 

"I  don't  care,"  Jack  declared,  comfortably,  as  he 
rolled  over  on  the  floor  with  the  pup  in  his  arms. 
"It  's  always  nice  to  hear  about  a  mastiff." 

"Now  tell  us  another  one,"  cried  the  insatiate 
Teddy.  Whereupon  Katherine  took  herself  in  hand, 
and  told  one  of  her  very  best  stories,  one  devoid  of 
dogs  and  mangers,  and  unimpeded  by  embarrassing 
imagery. 

For,  deeply  as  Katherine  was  shaken  by  the  self- 
revelation  that  had  come  to  her,  she  was  too  sym- 
pathetic, too  alive  to  the  influences  of  the  moment,  to 
succumb  to  the  inner  storm.  She  not  only  appeared 
to  be  absorbed  in  the  fortunes  of  a  runaway  sailor-boy, 
— he  was,  for  the  time  being,  the  most  interesting 
figure  in  fiction;  and  the  childish  faces,  intent  and 
eager,  seemed  quite  to  fill  out  her  mind  and  heart 
to  the  exclusion  of  disconcerting  ideas.  Once,  only, 
when  Uncle  Theodore,  with  a  glance  at  the  clock  said: 
"The  Albany  train  ought  to  be  just  pulling  out  of 
the  station,"  a  quick  contraction  of  the  heart  caught 
her,  and  she  found  herself  alluding  to  the  mother  of  the 
hero.  But  the  children  brought  her  up  very  short. 

"You  said  his  mother  died  when  he  was  a  baby!" 
Teddy  cried. 

"Oh,  yes,  so  she  did!  I  had  forgotten." 

"  I  don't  see  how  you  could  forget  a  thing  like  that! " 
Nannie  exclaimed,  reproachfully. 

Thus  jerked  back  to  the  safe  confines  of  fiction, 
Katherine  finished  the  story  without  further  misad- 


The  Dog  in  the  Manger  261 

venture,  and,  bed-hour  arriving  just  as  the  orphan 
sailor-boy  had  opportunely  become  master  of  a  full- 
rigged  ship,  she  was  fallen  upon  by  her  young  listeners 
with  a  headlong  demonstrativeness  in  which  lurked  no 
trace  of  that  judicial  spirit  that  had  characterized 
their  criticisms. 

"Save  the  fragments,  children!"  Uncle  Theodore 
called,  secretly  rejoicing  in  the  cumulative  muscle  of 
his  healthy  progeny;  and  presently,  as  the  little  feet 
went  pattering  over  the  stairs — "You  don't  look  as 
battered  as  I  expected,  Katherine." 

"Oh,  they  never  batter  me,"  she  laughed.  "I  've 
learned  to  parry." 

"They  've  pulled  your  belt  ribbon  into  a  hard  knot," 
Aunt  Anne  observed. 

"No;  I  did  that  myself;  I  got  in  a  hurry," — and 
Katherine  meekly  set  herself  to  untie  the  knot. 

Katherine  was  rather  surprised  at  her  own  self- 
possession,  then  and  later.  She  had  been  given  to 
understand  that  girls  in  her  situation  were  always  on 
the  verge  of  self-betrayal ;  that  they  were  abstracted 
and  nervous  and  altogether  unequal  to  the  claims  of 
human  intercourse.  She  supposed  it  was  a  sign  of  the 
deficiency  of  her  equipment  for  romantic  experiences, 
that  she  found  it  possible  to  pursue  the  even  tenor 
of  her  way  with  such  commonplace  ease.  When,  the 
next  day,  she  returned  home,  and  related  to  her 
grandmother  the  circumstance  of  Tom's  departure, 
she  felt  no  special  self-consciousness;  nor  was  she 
thrown  off  her  balance  by  the  arrival  of  a  telegram  for 
Mrs.  Day,  stating  that  Tom  had  found  his  father 
already  improving.  Strangest  of  all,  when  on  Tues- 
day a  letter  from  Tom  to  herself  was  put  into  her 
hands,  Katherine  did  not  start  nor  change  color  nor 


262  Katherine  Day 

conduct  herself  in  any  particular  like  a  damsel  with  a 
sentimental  secret  to  conceal.  She  read  the  letter 
aloud  to  the  family,  as  she  was  expected  to  do,  and  her 
voice  did  not  waver,  even  when  it  came  to  the  ending : 

"  Your  faithful  old  dog  in  the  manger, 

"TOM." 

"What  does  he  mean  by  dog  in  the  manger? "  Mrs. 
Day  inquired. 

"Only  some  nonsense  he  was  talking  on  Sunday." 
Upon  which  Katherine  folded  the  letter  and  put  it  into 
her  pocket. 

"I  am  not  sure  that  it  is  in  good  taste  for  him  to 
make  jokes  in  a  letter  like  that,"  Aunt  Fanny  re- 
marked, with  unusual  severity.  If  Sarah  was  to  be- 
come a  widow  like  herself,  no  one  knew  better  than 
Fanny  the  requirements  of  the  situation. 

"It  was  not  really  a  joke,"  Katherine  hastened  to 
explain;  "I  ought  not  to  have  called  it  nonsense;  it 
was  just  Tom's  way  of  criticising  himself." 

"A  thing  he  does  n't  often  do,"  Mrs.  Day  observed, 
rather  pointedly. 

And  what  did  Tom  mean  by  "dog  in  the  manger? " 
What  did  he  make  of  the  situation  ?  How  did  he  inter- 
pret the  sudden  stirring  of  the  waters  of  tranquil  good 
comradeship  where  the  cousins  had  so  long  and  so 
securely  floated? 

He  thought  of  it  a  good  deal  in  the  night  as  he  sped 
on  his  westward  way,  sleeping  only  intermittently,  and 
he  was  still  thinking  of  it,  when,  at  dawn,  he  alighted 
at  the  deserted  railway  station  at  Delphi.  He  had  not 
telegraphed  his  train  and  there  was  no  one  there  to 
meet  him.  He  strode  the  long  mile  of  the  broad,  elm- 
bordered  street  to  his  father's  house,  and  he  knew  that 


The  Dog  in  the  Manger  263 

what  quickened  his  steps  was  not  only  anxiety  for  his 
father  but  the  desire  to  escape  from  the  importunities 
of  another  subject. 

He  found  the  patient  already  rallying,  though  feebly, 
from  the  stroke.  He  was  not  fully  conscious,  yet  he 
seemed  dimly  and  gratefully  aware  of  his  son's  pres- 
ence. There  were  few  trained  nurses  in  Delphi,  and 
none  had  been  available  for  the  case.  As  Tom 
watched  his  stepmother,  strong  and  calm,  moving 
about  the  sick-room  with  that  air  of  quiet  assurance 
which  characterizes  a  good  nurse,  he  had  a  feel- 
ing that  she  was  drawing  her  husband  back  to  life 
by  sheer  force  of  will.  It  was  just  what  he  should 
have  expected  of  her, — that  she  should  be  absolutely 
mistress  of  the  situation.  And,  curiously  enough,  he 
found  that  she  reminded  him  to-day  very  much  of 
Katherine.  That  was  probably  because  Katherine 
wanted  to  be  a  nurse,  he  told  himself;  it  was  merely 
the  association  of  ideas.  But  no,  the  bend  of  her  head 
above  her  patient  was  like  Katherine 's  when  she 
stooped  to  pick  up  a  crying  child;  the  action  of  her 
hands  as  she  ministered  to  him  was  like  the  action  of 
Katherine 's  hands.  He  wondered  if  Katherine  really 
would  grow  into  such  a  woman  as  her  aunt — he  won- 
dered very  much. 

From  which  it  will  be  seen  that  Tom  had  not  by  any 
means  lost  hold  of  himself.  If  he  had  lain  awake  in 
his  berth,  pondering  these  things,  it  was  because  they 
acted  as  a  counter-irritant  to  a  mind  already  deeply 
moved  by  the  news  from  home.  His  anxiety  for  his 
father  was  not  a  subject  to  ponder  upon;  it  stimu- 
lated, directly,  nothing  but  a  more  or  less  acute 
suspense;  it  was  a  matter  of  feeling  only,  where 
thought,  speculation,  judgment,  were  not  specially 


264  Katherine  Day 

roused.  But  this  new  phase  of  his  relation  with  Kath- 
erine was  a  different  affair, —  not  so  important,  he 
would  have  explained,  but  more  bothersome. 

What  did  it  come  to,  anyway?  he  asked  himself,  for 
the  hundredth  time,  as  he  watched  his  stepmother 
quietly  chafing  the  long,  housebred  hand,  lying  nerve- 
less in  her  open  palm.  He  was  not  in  love,  of  course, 
— and  the  very  expression,  as  it  occurred  to  his  mind, 
antagonized  him  violently.  He  was  not  so  far  gone  as 
that!  But — would  he  be,  some  years  from  now,  when 
the  time  should  be  ripe  ?  And  would  Katherine  ?  And 
was  Katherine?  Ah,  was  she? 

Perhaps  Tom  was  right,  after  all — perhaps  he  was 
far  indeed  from  being  in  love.  Certainly  he  himself 
should  have  been  the  best  judge  as  to  that!  He  had 
had  his  moment  of  revelation,  his  moment  of  recogni- 
tion, and  face  and  voice  had  borne  witness  to  it.  But 
when  would  that  moment  recur?  Not  just  at  present, 
if  he  could  help  himself. 

Tom  McLean  was  not  imaginative,  but  he  was  im- 
peratively, tenaciously  ambitious;  and  he  could  ill 
brook  any  influence  that  might  interfere  with  the  ful- 
filment of  his  ambition.  When  he  had  said  to  Kather- 
ine :  "  Oh,  Archie  's  going  to  be  married ;  he  's  going  to 
have  his  hands  tied," — he  had  spoken  with  deliberate 
conviction.  A  man  could  not  tackle  fate  with  his 
hands  tied, — that  was  an  established  proposition, — 
and  Tom  had  no  idea  of  shortening  the  term  he  had  set. 
He  should  certainly  not  marry  before  he  was  thirty- 
five;  that  was  nine  years; — and  meanwhile?  Sup- 
posing Katherine  should  take  Paul  Stuyvesant,  or 
somebody  else  ?  For  an  instant  his  mind  stood  still  on 
the  thought,  and  then  there  stole  upon  him  a  strange, 
unwarranted  assurance  that  she  never  would. 


The  Dog  in  the  Manger  265 

Now  Tom  was  not  so  fatuous  as  to  imagine  that 
Katherine  cared  for  him;  indeed,  he  was  peculiarly 
devoid  of  the  sort  of  vanity  which  such  an  assumption 
would  have  implied.  He  merely  believed  her  to  be  as 
fancy  free  as  she  had  always  appeared.  Yet  deep 
down  in  a  part  of  his  consciousness  which  he  was  visit- 
ing to-day  for  the  first  time,  was  a  conviction  that  he 
knew  his  cousin  better  than  anybody  else,  and  that  she 
never  could  do  anything  so  foreign,  so  out  of  character, 
as  to — marry  out  of  the  family!  And  this  amazing 
proposition  Tom  calmly  propounded  to  himself  with- 
out an  inkling  of  its  absurdity.  Truly,  Tom,  for  all  his 
twenty-six  years,  for  all  his  masterfulness,  was  yet  but 
a  crude,  undisciplined  youngster. 

During  the  first  day  of  his  absence  he  and  Archie 
had  exchanged  a  couple  of  telegrams  on  business 
matters,  but  when  it  came  to  writing,  the  letter  got 
itself  addressed  to  Katherine.  Tom  sat  at  a  little  desk 
in  his  father's  room  reporting  of  the  situation  there, — 
writing  more  fully  than  he  would  have  thought  of 
doing  to  any  one  but  Katherine.  Once,  in  the  course 
of  his  letter,  he  found  himself  putting  in  her  name, 
quite  as  if  he  had  been  talking  to  her;  and  suddenly  a 
strong  tenderness  seized  him,  an  unaccountable  desire 
to  write  "dear  Katherine."  He  glanced  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  letter;  how  non-committal  it  was  there — 
"  dear  Katherine  "!  Yet  if  he  were  to  put  it  in  in  any 
other  place  it  would  look  very  strange — and  oh,  how 
sweet ! 

Yes,  he  did  want  to  keep  her  to  himself.  But  he 
must  not  say  so  again, — not  for  years  to  come! 
He  hoped  she  had  not  caught  the  phrase.  It  would 
only  have  offended  her,  and  it  would  be  embarrass- 
ing to  try  and  explain  it  away.  As  for  admitting, 


266  Katherine  Day 

even  to  himself,  that  it  had  any  special  significance, 
— that  was  far,  indeed,  from  his  intention.  No, — 
there  must  be  no  admissions  whatever;  for  a  long 
time  yet  he  must  play  the  unhandsome  part  of  dog  in 
the  manger. 

And  so,  when  it  came  to  the  end  of  the  letter,  he 
signed  himself  as  we  have  seen ;  and  Aunt  Fanny,  had 
she  but  known,  was  in  the  right  of  it  to  be  shocked. 


CHAPTER  XI 

A  THROW  FOR  LIFE 

"  Never  again  elude  the  choice  of  tints! 

White  shall  not  neutralize  the  black,  nor  good 
Compensate  bad  in  man,  absolve  him  so: 
Life's  business  being  just  the  terrible  choice." 

DR.  McLean  meanwhile  continued  to  improve,  in- 
somuch that  at  the  end  of  three  or  four  days 
his  recovery  seemed  secure  enough  to  permit  of  Tom's 
return  to  his  office.  But,  as  the  patient  gained  a  fuller 
consciousness,  he  fell  under  a  pitiful  depression  of 
spirits,  so  appealing  to  the  filial  affection, — which  was 
a  matter  of  habit  with  Tom,  and  therefore  very  vigor- 
ous,— that  the  young  stock-broker  made  the  sacrifice 
of  a  second  three  days  for  the  consolation  of  the 
sufferer. 

Tom  always  had  a  preposterous  notion  that  if  he 
had  not  been  so  preoccupied  during  his  week's  absence 
at  Delphi,  if  he  had  kept  his  mind  on  business,  things 
would  not  have  gone  wrong  at  the  office.  This  was,  of 
course,  an  absurd  theory,  but  the  one  fact  remained, 
that — whether  from  causes  occult  or  natural — things 
did  go  very  wrong  indeed. 

It  was  a  great  week  on  the  stock  exchange, — a 
record-breaker  the  younger  members  were  inclined  to 
call  it.  The  volume  of  business  was  enormous,  the 


268  Katherine  Day 

rise  in  prices  phenomenal,  the  speculative  atmosphere 
electric.  Yet  while  industrials  and  railroads  and  even 
"governments"  themselves — nearly  all  securities  in 
fact,  good,  bad,  and  indifferent — were  booming,  it 
happened,  as  it  always  does,  that  one  or  two  got 
caught  in  some  undercurrent  and  carried  to  one  side 
out  of  the  course  of  the  great  onward  movement ;  and 
all  the  influence  such  stocks  felt  was  a  sinister  sucking 
away  of  the  undertow  created  by  the  main  current  in 
the  middle  there.  And  so  it  chanced  that  a  certain 
venture  on  which  Archie  had  recently  staked  every- 
thing he  possessed,  kept  sagging,  and  sinking  lower 
and  lower,  not  with  any  sudden  or  alarming  drop 
that  might  have  startled  him  into  corrective  action, 
but  with  so  hesitating  a  decline  that  it  could  hardly  be 
recognized  as  definitive.  And  Archie,  sanguine  at 
first,  desperate  only  at  last,  saw  his  entire  personal 
capital  sucked  away,  and  still  no  staying  of  the 
decline. 

On  the  day  when  he  sold  his  last  substantial  security 
— at  a  handsome  advance,  too — and  added  the  goodly 
sum  to  that  ever  vanishing  margin,  I  think  he  would 
have  held  his  hand  and  borne  his  losses  as  pluck- 
ily  as  another  had  he  been  left  to  his  own  devices.  He 
was  not  without  a  delicate,  if  not  robust,  sense  of 
honor,  and  there  was  only  one  thing  before  which,  he 
could  have  recoiled  as  he  did  before  a  breach  of  faith 
with  Tom.  That  one  thing  was  the  loss  of  Winny; 
and,  when  the  alternative  was  presented,  he  yielded, 
much  as  a  sincere  martyr,  with  nerves  unequal  to  the 
test,  might  have  yielded  to  the  actual  pressure  of  the 
iron  upon  his  vital  parts. 

Horace  Gerald,  victim  as  much  to  his  own  fatuity  as 
to  Archie's  over-confidence,  had  allowed  himself  to  be 


A  Throw  for  Life  269 

drawn  deeper  and  deeper  into  their  unlucky  specula- 
tions, and  he  was  not  one  to  bear  a  financial  loss  with 
equanimity.  When,  at  last,  he  perceived  that  they 
were  playing  a  losing  game,  he  stopped  short  off,  but 
not  without  a  fierce  turning  upon  Archie  whom  he 
held  personally  responsible  for  the  disaster.  It  was 
only  about  a  fortnight  since  bad  luck  had  definitively 
set  in,  but  progress  on  the  down  grade  is  proverbially 
swift  and  that  short  period  of  time  had  sufficed  seri- 
ously to  embarrass  our  unlucky  speculator.  In  short, 
Gerald  had  not  only  lost  what  ready  money  he  could 
lay  hands  on ;  he  had  even  mortgaged  his  gingerbread 
homestead,  whose  every  meaningless  excrescence, 
every  inappropriate  decoration,  was  dear  to  his  self- 
importance.  Thus  galled  in  his  vanity,  mulcted  of 
that  which  it  fed  upon,  he  turned,  with  cruel  vindic- 
tiveness,  upon  his  partner  in  folly. 

It  was  the  third  day  of  Tom's  absence  from  the 
office,  that  Gerald  came  in,  at  noon,  and  sat,  like  a  low- 
ering thunder-cloud,  watching  the  ticker.  There  was 
not  much  doing  in  the  particular  stock  upon  which 
Archie  and  he  had  both  recently  concentrated  their 
entire  resources;  but  each  sale  recorded  was  a  trifle 
lower  than  the  previous  one,  and  just  before  the  clos- 
ing of  the  stock  exchange,  came  a  quotation  a  half 
point  below  their  margin.  Gerald  got  up  and  faced 
Archie,  who  had  been  too  busy  for  more  than  an  occa- 
sional desperate  glance  in  the  direction  of  his  own 
affairs.  The  two  men  were  alone  for  the  moment — 
Archie,  pale  and  shaken,  Gerald  hard  and  menacing  as 
any  other  brute  at  bay. 

"Dished,"  he  growled.  The  low  guttural  was 
hardly  articulate. 

"We  're  both  in  the  same  box,"  Archie  replied, 


270  Katherine  Day 

trying  his  best  to  take  it  lightly.  "We  've  played 
high  and  we  've  lost.  Of  course  it  was  on  the  cards." 

"It  was  not  cards  we  were  playing,"  Gerald  an- 
swered, slowly  and  significantly.  "The  thing  was  not 
presented  to  me  as  a  game  of  chance.  You  professed 
to  know  what  you  were  about.  Either  you  deliber- 
ately deceived  me  or  you  are  a  brainless,  conceited  cox- 
comb, and  you  deserve  exposure! " 

Archie  changed  color  and  his  eyes  flashed.  "Mr. 
Gerald ! "  he  cried ;  and  then  he  checked  himself. 

"Don't  Mr.  Gerald  me,"  the  other  retorted;  "I 
won't  have  anything  of  the  kind.  You  owe  me, — yes, 
— you  owe  me  thirteen  thousand  five  hundred  dol- 
lars. Your  first  business  is  to  pay  that.  When  you 
have  shown  that  you  have  a  sufficient  sense  of  decency 
to  do  so  you  will  be  at  liberty  to  state  your  side  of  the 
case  ;  but  not  before."  And  the  man  turned  on  his 
heel  to  leave  the  office.  But: 

"Wait!"  Archie  cried;  and  as  Gerald  stayed  his 
step,  without,  however,  turning  toward  him:  "You 
know,"  the  boy  declared,  "  as  well  as  I  do,  that  I  have 
not  a  dollar  left." 

Then  Gerald  faced  about. 

"So!"  he  said,  slowly  again  and  in  alow  voice,  his 
eyes  narrowing  to  an  ugly  slit.  "You  propose  to  step 
out  of  the  game  and  let  me  whistle  for  my  money." 

"What  else  can  I  do?"  cried  Archie,  feeling  that  it 
was  ignoble  to  parley  with  the  brute  —  the  brute 
that  was  Winny's  father!  "What  else  can  I  do?" 

"  I  understood  that  you  still  believed  the  stock  was 
good;  that  a  quick  turn  might  set  it  spinning  any 
day." 

"Yes;  but — " 

"Set  it  spinning, — those  were  your  words,  as  I  re- 


A  Throw  for  Life  271 

member,  only  yesterday;  and  you  professed  to  have 
your  information  from  one  who  knew." 

"And  so  I  did!  But  how  does  that  help  matters  if 
I  ' ve  no  more  money  to  risk  ? ' ' 

Again  Gerald's  eyes  narrowed  perceptibly.  He 
had  nothing  to  lose,  everything  to  gain.  This  man, 
impoverished,  was  nothing  to  him, — should  be 
nothing  to  his  daughter.  Enriched  again  he  could 
count  at  least  upon  the  reimbursement  of  his  own 
losses, — not  in  equity,  but  by  the  strong  compulsion 
which  he  so  well  knew  how  to  exercise.  It  was 
clearly  for  his  interest  that  the  game  should  continue. 

"Are  the  resources  of  McLean  &  Day  exhausted?" 
he  asked  significantly. 

"I  have  never  touched  the  resources  of  McLean  & 
Day ! ' '  Archie  protested  hotly.  "  I  'm  not  a  rascal ! ' ' 

"Highty  tighty,  young  man!  What  language  are 
you  giving  me?" 

Archie  recovered  himself  instantly.  "I  beg  your 
pardon,  sir,"  he  said,  "I  meant  nothing  personal!" — 
and  as  the  words  crossed  his  lips  he  felt  himself  in 
a  measure  avenged;  for  the  man  there  had  not  per- 
ceived that  they  were  insulting — "You  have  perhaps 
forgotten  the  terms  of  my  agreement  with  McLean." 

"The  terms  of  your  agreement  are  no  affair  of 
mine.  I  am  only  concerned  to  see  to  it  that  you  are 
correct  in  your  relations  with  me  and  'my  family.  I 
give  you  the  rest  of  the  week  to  adjust  matters.  If, 
by  Sunday,  you  have  no  suggestions  to  offer,  it  will 
be  my  painful  duty  to  tell  Winny  that — "  Archie's 
eyes  were  blazing  now. 

"To  tell  Winny  what?"  he  demanded,  taking  a 
step  forward. 

Gerald  was  cowed,  though  he  did  not  know  that 


272  Katharine  Day 

Archie  saw  it.  He  ended  his  sentence  quite  differ- 
ently from  what  he  had  intended,  but  with  an  ill- 
assumed  dignity  born  of  the  enforced  moderation  of 
his  words:  "To  tell  Winny — the  truth,"  said  he. 

As  Gerald  passed  out  of  the  office,  a  telegraph  mes- 
senger came  in.  The  dispatch  was  from  Tom. 

"  Can't  come  back  before  Monday.     Hold  the  helm  hard," 

it  read. 

Archie  looked  it  over, — after  which  he  stood  for 
some  minutes  lost  in  thought.  Then,  glancing  once 
more  at  the  dispatch,  he  tore  it  into  the  smallest  pos- 
sible fragments  and  dropped  them  into  the  waste- 
paper  basket.  No  danger  of  forgetting  the  message: 
"Hold  the  helm  hard"-  "Hold  the  helm  hard." 
The  words  kept  repeating  themselves  in  his  mind 
while  he  thought  of  other  things  till  they  had  quite 
lost  their  meaning. 

The  rest  of  that  week  Archie  spent  every  leisure 
hour  with  Winny.  She  wondered  that  she  allowed 
him  to,  for  she  was  never  lavish  with  her  favors,  and 
she  was  skilled  in  little  pretexts  of  other  interests  by 
which  she  kept  alive  in  him  a  proper  sense  of  appre- 
ciation. But  there  was  something  about  Archie  that 
week  which  she  found  it  hard  to  resist — a  combination 
of  meekness  and  importunity,  a  half-timid  eagerness, 
that  in  one  of  his  natural  grace  and  ease  was  very 
captivating. 

And  Archie?  I  think  he  knew  well  enough  that 
the  end  was  at  hand.  All  his  sanguine  confidence 
had  deserted  him  from  the  moment  that  he  touched 
the  resources  of  McLean  &  Day.  He  knew,  when  he 
signed  that  first  check,  that  all  was  up  with  him.  He 


A  Throw  for  Life  273 

believed  himself  to  be  yielding  to  a  fatality,  and  so 
he  was, — to  the  fatality  of  a  weak  will,  of  an  unstable 
conscience.  He  did  it  as  a  man  in  a  burning  house 
leaps  to  destruction; — because  he  could  not  bear  the 
agony  of  suspense  on  the  uncertain  chance  of  rescue. 
Anything,  anything, — destruction  itself,  was  better 
than  that!  And  so,  for  three  days,  he  courted  it 
among  men;  for  three  evenings  his  harassed  spirit 
found  a  refuge  with  Winny,  cool  and  sweet  as  ever, 
and  blessedly  unconscious  of  coming  ill. 

On  Sunday,  when  he  presented  himself  at  the  door, 
he  was  met  by  Gerald, — hat  in  hand,  that  the  en- 
counter might  seem  a  casual  one. 

"Well?" 

No  judicial  interrogatory  could  have  done  more 
execution  with  Archie's  case  than  that  hard  mono- 
syllable. But  he  clutched  at  possible  respite. 

"  McLean  is  coming  back  to-morrow,"  he  said,  "  per- 
haps he  will  straighten  things  out." 

Gerald  gave  him  an  ugly  look ;  he  had  small  faith  in 
McLean's  good  will,  yet — he  could  afford  to  grant  one 
day  of  grace,  he,  who  had  the  whip  hand  in  the  affair. 
So  he  only  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  passed  down  the 
walk,  leaving  Archie  to  find  Winny  and  forget  if  he 
could  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  Horace  Gerald. 

And  would  Tom  help  ?  That  was  what  Archie  asked 
himself  a  hundred  times  that  day,  a  thousand  times 
that  night.  Would  Tom  help?  There  was  probably 
not  another  man  of  Tom's  acquaintance  who  would 
have  asked  such  a  question  ;  there  were  few  men  liv- 
ing who,  in  Archie's  place,  would  have  felt  the  small- 
est spark  of  hope,  when,  the  next  morning,  the 
partners  met. 

Archie  went  to  the  city  early,  but,  early  as  he  was, 


274  Katherine  Day 

he  found  Tom  already  busy  at  his  desk.  He  had  come 
through  on  the  night  train. 

' '  Hullo,  Tom ! ' '  Archie  exclaimed.  ' '  What  an  early 
worm  you  are ! ' ' 

"And  you,"  Tom  rejoined,  well  pleased  with  his 
partner's  zeal.  "  Is  this  the  sort  of  hours  you  've  been 
keeping?" 

"  Not  exactly,"  Archie  answered;  "  I  came  in  to  get 
a  word  with  you  before  she  started  up," — with  a  nod  in 
the  general  direction  of  the  stock  exchange. 

"  That  's  right !  We  shall  have  plenty  of  time  to  run 
things  through.  Where  shall  we  begin? " 

"Supposing  we  begin  at  your  end;  how  did  you 
leave  your  father? " 

"  Oh,  he  's  coming  round  all  right ;  the  doctor  says  it 
could  n't  be  better.  The  only  trouble  is,  he  's  so  devil- 
ish despondent.  That  was  why  I  stayed  on  so;  it 
seemed  to  comfort  him."  And  Tom's  mind  re- 
verted to  the  hours  he  had  spent  at  his  father's  bed- 
side, the  long,  thin  fingers  clasped  about  his  own  sturdy 
fist.  The  invalid  had  liked  it  so.  When  Tom  clasped 
his  hand  in  return,  he  would  soon  double  up  his  son's 
fingers  and  fold  his  own  palm  around  the  knuckles. 
The  impression  of  strength,  of  resistance,  seemed  to  be 
what  he  craved. 

"  It  was  hard  to  leave  him,  even  now,"  Tom  ended, 
while  a  shadow,  new  to  his  face,  deepened  there. 

Archie  felt  instinctively  that  if  any  moment  could 
be  favorable  it  was  now ;  he  had  never  seen  Tom  soften 
like  that.  Throwing  himself  into  their  solitary  leath- 
ern arm-chair,  as  if  an  ease  of  attitude  might  give  him 
ease  of  address  at  this  critical  juncture: 

"Of  course  you  had  to  stay  on,"  he  assented;  and 
then,  keeping  his  eyes  fixed  on  his  partner's  face: — 


A  Throw  for  Life  275 

''But  I  can't  help  wishing  it  had  been  different.  I 
wish  you  could  have  got  back  the  middle  of  the  week." 

The  face  he  was  watching  changed;  there  were  no 
more  softening  shadows  there. 

"Why,  what  do  you  mean?  Have  we  lost  any 
chances?" 

' '  Worse  than  that !    That  is,  I—" 

"You?" 

Archie  sprang  to  his  feet;  there  was  no  use  trying 
to  be  easy  and  leisurely.  He  went  over  to  the  win- 
dow, and  stood,  with  his  back  to  Tom,  looking  down 
into  the  still  deserted  street.  How  crowded  it  would 
be  an  hour  from  now!  He  was  not  the  only  lunatic 
at  large, — there  was  comfort  in  that. 

"Fact  is,  Tom,"  he  said,  "I  've  been  burning  my 
fingers  a  bit  in  that  boiling  cauldron  over  there  and 
— well,  the  chestnuts  did  not  show  up. " 

Tom  turned  on  his  stool  to  face  the  culprit ;  the  sight 
of  the  slender,  well-dressed  back  added  contempt  to 
his  displeasure. 

"  So ! "  he  said,  with  a  slow  indignation,  cold  yet,  but 
smouldering.  "So — you  've  been  speculating!" 

"Nasty  word;  is  n't  it?"  Archie  muttered. 

"Nasty  thing,"  said  Tom,  "when  it  is  n't  honest!" 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  that  ? ' ' 

Archie  turned  toward  Tom  with  what  should  have 
been  defiance;  but  the  knowledge  of  worse  to  come 
quelled  the  impulse. 

"  Only  that  when  I  took  you  for  a  man  of  your  word, 
I  supposed  it  was  the  spirit  and  not  only  the  letter  of  a 
contract  you  would  honor." 

And  again  Archie  could  not  permit  himself  a  bold 
retort. 

"Then  according  to  your  understanding,  I  was  not 


276  Katharine  Day 

free  to  handle  my  private  fortune  after  my  own 
judgment? "  he  asked,  rather  lamely. 

"According  to  my  understanding,  and  according  to 
your  understanding,  there  is  no  room  for  a  gambler  in 
the  firm  of  McLean  &  Day." 

And  still  Archie  postponed  the  worst. 

"  The  man  who  has  no  use  for  me  has  no  use  for  my 
name,"  he  retorted,  with  a  momentary  flickering  of 
his  natural  spirit. 

"All  the  better! "  Tom  declared,  turning  back  to  his 
desk  as  if  he  had  had  enough  of  a  distasteful  subject. 

Archie  glanced  at  the  clock ;  in  half  an  hour  things 
would  start  up.  Could  he  afford  to  prolong  the  respite  ? 
He  came  over  to  Tom's  desk,  and,  leaning  his  elbows 
on  it,  said,  in  his  most  ingratiating  tone:  "Tom,  it  's 
very  serious,  and  it  means  a  great  deal  more  to  me  than 
money;  it  means  more  to  me  than  life." 

"Oh!"  Tom  replied,  with  ill-concealed  satisfaction 
in  his  own  sagacity.  "  You  mean  Miss  Gerald !  Is  she 
going  to  throw  you  over? " 

"Never!     Winny  could  n't!  But  her  father — " 

"What!   that  old  gambler?" 

"Oh,  that  won't  help  any;  he  doesn't  feel  any 
better  for  having  got  his  own  fingers  burnt." 

" Maybe  not!  But  it  would  n't  look  very  well  to  see 
him  turn  on  you,  when  everybody  will  know  that  he  's 
the  bigger  fool  of  the  two." 

"I  don't  know  how  every  one  will  know,"  Archie 
retorted;  "  I  don't  suppose  his  brokers  will  blab." 

Tom  drew  in  his  breath. 

"That  's  so,"  he  agreed, — and,  for  the  moment,  he 
felt  something  like  relenting  toward  his  unlucky  part- 
ner. Archie  had  failed  in  the  essentials,  and  he  must 
take  the  consequences;  but — he  had  his  good  points. 


A  Throw  for  Life  277 

Katherine  herself  could  not  have  been  quicker  to 
set  him  right.  Katherine ! — She  would  feel  this  thing 
badly ;  even  a  dog  in  the  manger  has  some  bowels  of 
compassion  in  him. 

"What  are  you  in  for?"  he  asked. 

"All  there  was,"  said  Archie. 

"Great  Caesar  !  You  have  n't  thrown  your  last 
copper  overboard?" 

"The  very  last!  It  was  twenty  shares  of  J.  P.,  by 
the  way." 

"But  that  's  jumping!" 

"Yes,  I  got  the  advantage  of  quite  a  high  jump  my- 
self. Sold  at  130." 

"And  pitched  that  in  with  the  rest?" 

Tom  must  have  softened.  Was  it  the  week  at  his 
father's  bedside  that  had  opened  his  mind  to  so  mild 
and  unwonted  a  visitant  as  compassion?  Yet  it  was 
not  of  the  sufferer,  now  so  many  miles  away,  that  he 
was  thinking.  It  was  Archie's  likeness  to  his  sister 
that  had  caught  his  attention.  Tom  had  seen  Kath- 
erine look  like  that  when  she  was  sorry  for  somebody. 
What  though  it  was  only  for  himself  that  Archie  was 
sorry?  The  likeness  told  in  his  favor.  It  was  nothing 
more  than  a  certain  droop  of  the  lines  of  his  face  that 
touched  his  cousin  to  a  leniency  which  took  the  sting 
out  of  his  words  as  he  remarked,  thoughtfully: 
"Archie,  you  ought  to  be  in  swaddling  clothes." 

Archie  tried  to  laugh. 

"You  '11  think  I  ought  to  be  in  a  straight-jacket," 
he  answered,  "when  you  know  the  worst." 

"The  worst?  What  's  that?"  All  the  leniency  was 
gone  from  Tom's  voice. 

"Well,  the  truth  is,  I  've  been — borrowing." 

Tom  stiffened  and  lowered. 


278  Katherine  Day 

"  On  what  security,  if  I  may  ask? " 

"On  that  of  McLean  &  Day," — and  Archie  straight- 
ened himself,  conscious  that  it  was  the  first  manly 
thing  he  had  said  in  all  that  interview.  The  very 
manliness  of  it  was  a  challenge,  and,  at  last,  Tom  had 
something  to  fight. 

He  did  not  ask  how  much  money  had  been  used;  if 
it  was  a  hundred  dollars  or  ten  thousand  was  all  one  to 
him.  McLean  &  Day  had  been  involved,  the  integrity 
of  the  firm — of  its  principles  at  least — was  threatened, 
and  at  the  hands  of  the  man  he  had  trusted.  Archie 
saw  the  change  and  knew  that  his  case  was  desperate. 

"  It  was  a  throw  for  life,  Tom !  The  old  man  had  me 
under  his  heel.  It  was  my  only  chance." 

"It  was  not  your  chance,"  Tom  interjected,  while 
his  smouldering  wrath  grew  hot. 

"Put  it  any  way  you  like,"  Archie  cried.  "The 
chance  was  there,  and  I  took  it,  and — I  lost  it.  And, 
Tom,  you're  the  only  man  that  can  save  me.  It 's  not 
the  money,"  he  went  on.  "  I  meant  it  only  as  a  loan. 
I  '11  pay  it  back — somehow.  I  have  n't  had  time  to 
think  how.  But,  if  you  turn  me  off,  Tom, — if  you  go 
back  on  me — " 

"  /  go  back  on  you! ' ' 

"Yes!  That's  what  it  would  be!  We  were  friends 
before  we  were  partners,  Tom,  and — it  's  a  family 
matter." 

"  That  is  not  my  view  of  it." 

"  Take  what  view  you  will  of  it,"  Archie  cried,  speak- 
ing more  and  more  rapidly.  "Call  it  any  name  you 
will, — call  me  any  name  you  will,  but — don't  break  up 
the  concern.  Not  yet,  at  least.  You  may  trust  me, 
Tom !  I  will  swear  on  my  honor — " 

"  On  your  what  ? ' ' 


A  Throw  for  Life  279 

"On  my  honor,"  Archie  repeated,  scarcely  heeding 
the  interruption, — "to  be  as  subordinate  as  an  office- 
boy,  and  to  slave  like  a  man  with  a  million  in  sight — if 
only  you  '11  leave  things  as  they  are  till  I  've  straight- 
ened matters  out  with  Gerald.  If  you  don't, — well, 
Tom,  I  'm  done  for  till  the  end  of  time!"  And  the 
supplicating  voice  died  out  on  the  words,  for  he  per- 
ceived that  Tom's  face  was  only  hardening. 

"  When  you  've  done  with  tall  talk,"  Tom  remarked, 
"  perhaps  you  might  as  well  give  me  the  figures." 

Archie  p'ulled  himself  up  sharp. 

"They  are  not  more  than  half  my  interest  in  the 
firm,"  he  answered. 

Tom's  face  twitched;  he  had  not  thought  of  any 
such  sum  as  that;  but — "It  's  not  the  amount,"  he 
controlled  himself  sufficiently  to  say.  "  It  's  the  thing 
itself." 

Already  his  mind  was  swiftly  running  through  the 
resources  of  the  firm.  Their  credit  was  jeopardized 
but  not  yet  touched. 

Coldly  dismissing  Archie's  plea  as  a  closed  issue, 
Tom  turned  his  attention  to  the  urgent  business  as- 
pect of  the  situation.  It  called  for  all  the  executive 
ability  he  possessed,  and  more  than  all  the  diplomacy 
he  had  ever  thought  of  using.  The  hours  went  by 
fast  and  furious,  and  when,  late  in  the  afternoon,  the 
last  effort  had  been  made,  for  that  day  at  least,  it  was 
by  no  means  certain  that  the  effort  had  been  success- 
ful. His  chief  reliance  was  upon  Ford  &  Bridgman, 
and  from  them  he  could -not  hear  until  the  morning. 

For  a  moment,  before  parting,  the  two  men  stood 
face  to  face,  Archie  tall  and  pale,  Tom  close-knit,  and 
hard  as  hickory. 

"  Have  you  said  your  last  word? "  Archie  asked. 


280  Katherine  Day 

"  No ! "  Tom  replied  with  emphasis.  ' '  We  '11  attend 
to  that  when  this  is  over." 

"Over?    How?" 

"I  don't  know — how." 

"And  then?" 

"And  then — we'll  close  up  this  concern,  and  I  will 
do  what  I  knew  I  ought  to  do  from  the  beginning, — 
stand  on  my  own  legs." 

"You  don't  particularly  mind  giving  me  over  to  the 
demnition  bowwows?"  Archie  inquired,  with  a  last 
effort  to  conciliate  Tom  and  deceive  himselflry  speak- 
ing lightly. 

"The  demnition  bowwows!"  Tom  repeated  con- 
temptuously. "I  should  think  that  you  had  looked 
after  that  part  of  the  business  yourself!" 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE    ONE     GRACE 

"Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 
Or  what  's  a  heaven  for?" 

IT  had  been  a  severe  shock  to  Tom,  this  sudden 
reverse  in  his  fortunes,  and  the  far  graver  jeopard- 
izing of  his  business  credit.  When  a  man  has  deliber- 
ately devoted  the  years  of  his  youth,  the  powers  of 
early  manhood,  his  very  lien  upon  the  future,  to  one 
exclusive  aim,  he  has  exposed  himself  in  a  single,  but 
none  the  less  vulnerable,  quarter  to  the  attacks  of 
misfortune.  Yet  it  was  hardly  a  sense  of  personal  in- 
jury that  made  Tom  so  hard  upon  Archie.  The 
exigencies  of  the  situation  left  little  leisure  for 
personal  resentment,  for  which,  indeed,  he  had 
still  less  natural  inclination.  He  was  not,  by  na- 
ture, vindictive;  he  was  only  harsh  with  the  harsh- 
ness that  often  comes  with  crudity.  He  saw  the  plain 
facts  of  life  with  the  distinctness  given  to  the  normal 
but  uninstructed  eye;  he  missed  the  relations  of 
things  to  one  another,  the  modifications  of  atmosphere 
and  perspective.  Hence,  when  he  contemplated 
Archie's  character  in  the  light  of  his  recent  action, 
Tom  could  see  him  only  as  an  inferior  order  of  scoun- 
drel, weak  as  he  was  dishonest;  and  this  unflattering 


282  Katharine  Day 

presentment  stood  out  before  him,  isolated  and  un- 
relieved by  any  perception  of  the  subject's  inward 
anatomy  or  outward  relationships. 

Tom  was  incapable  of  conceiving  of  the  temptation 
of  circumstance,  chiefly  because  he  had  no  more  com- 
prehension of  an  emotional  response  to  temptation 
than  a  piece  of  flint  might  be  supposed  to  possess  of 
the  susceptibilities  of  a  magnet.  And  because  his 
condemnation  of  his  partner  was  a  matter,  not  merely 
of  personal  resentment,  nor  of  momentary  indigna- 
tion, but  of  what  he  considered  a  clear,  indisputable 
perception  of  facts,  it  was  not  immediately  modified 
by  that  usually  softening  influence,  the  passage  of 
time.  If,  on  Monday,  he  perceived  that  Archie  was 
a  feeble  villain,  on  Tuesday  he  found  no  reason  to 
change  his  opinion.  Insomuch  that  when,  on  Tues- 
day morning,  a  note  from  Katherine  arrived,  begging 
him  to  come  and  see  her,  he  was  betrayed  into  the 
absurdity  of  believing  that  she  would  share  his 
opinion  of  her  brother,  and  frankly  perceive  the 
necessities  of  the  case. 

Katherine  was  prejudiced,  of  course;  she  was  fond 
of  Archie,  and  had  believed  in  him.  Well,  so  had  he, 
—Tom!  They  had  both  been  deceived;  they  must 
both  recognize  the  fact.  He  would  tell  her  not  to  be 
too  unhappy  about  it.  Archie  was  in  a  bad  way,  of 
course;  but  he,  Tom,  would  come  out  of  this  all  right, 
so  there  would  not  be  that  to  worry  about; — in  fact 
he  had  already  had  a  favorable  telegram  from  Ford 
&  Bridgman.  That  would  be  a  great  comfort  to  her. 
Dear  Katherine!  He  could  almost  fancy  himself 
speaking  the  words  he  had  not  ventured  to  write — • 
Dear  Katherine!  Yes,  he  must  console  her — and 
at  the  thought  his  heart  grew  so  tender  within  him 


The  One  Grace  283 

that  he  was  seized  with  a  sudden  apprehension; — he 
felt  almost  afraid  of  her. 

And  truly,  Tom,  in  his  hardness  and  intolerance, 
had  reason  to  be  apprehensive,  though  not  of  the 
gentler  embarrassments  he  dreaded;  for  Archie  had 
been  before  him. 

On  Monday  evening,  after  that  terrible  day  that 
left  him  stripped  of  his  last  fluttering  rag  of  hope, 
the  unlucky  speculator  had  gone  for  sympathy,  not 
.to  Winny,  the  girl  for  whose  sake  he  had  risked  and 
lost  more  than  a  fortune,  but  to  his  sister.  His 
avoidance  of  Winny  was  instinctive, — he  himself  had 
no  comprehension  of  its  motive, — but  his  appeal  to 
Katherine  was  founded  on  something  more  substan- 
tial than  instinct,  on  nothing  less  tangible  than  the 
experience  of  a  lifetime.  Never  yet  had  Katherine 
failed  him,  in  fair  weather  or  foul,  and  so  he  went  to 
her  that  Monday  evening  and  told  her  as  much  of  the 
truth  as  could  not  be  avoided. 

He  told  her  how  he  had  been  beguiled  by  mislead- 
ing information  into  taking  unlucky  risks, — such 
risks  as  had  been  the  making  of  many  a  great  fortune ; 
of  how  he  had  tried  to  save  himself  by  further  risks, 
because  he  was  not  a  coward  to  succumb  at  the  first 
setback ;  how  he  had  become  more  and  more  deeply 
involved,  always  for  Winny 's  sake;  and  how,  at 
last,  he  had — yes,  he  had — borrowed  of  McLean  & 
Day. 

Katherine  changed  color  at  that ;  she,  too,  had  her 
instincts. 

But, — it  was  his  own  money,  he  reminded  her,  his 
own  capital  that  he  had  put  into  the  concern. 

"Oh,  but  Archie!"  she  cried,  possessed  of  a  new 
and  intolerable  anxiety,  "You  promised!" 


284  Katherine  Day 

But  Archie  was  adroit  where  adroitness  would 
serve,  though  he  had  recognized  the  futility  of  trying 
to  fence  with  Tom. 

"  That  was  different,  Katherine.  You  don't  under- 
stand," he  protested, — and  almost  he  was  bejuggled 
by  his  own  sophistry.  "It  was  agreed  that  McLean 
&  Day  should  not  speculate;  but  every  firm  of  the 
kind  lends  money  to  speculators.  I  was  acting  on 
my  own  account;  I  merely  borrowed  of  the  firm." 

Katherine  was  groping  for  the  real  truth, — groping- 
for  it, — yet  half  unconsciously  evading  it.  All  this 
sounded  plausible;  and  why  should  she  expect  to 
understand  the  niceties  of  business  ethics? 

"If  you  had  only  come  to  me  before!"  she  ex- 
claimed, glad  enough  to  waive  perplexing  problems. 

"But  what  good  would  that  have  done?"  cried 
Archie.  "  I  had  to  go  on,  to  the  last  drop  of  blood, — 
to  the  last  drop  of  blood!" — and  his  voice,  as  he 
gloomily  repeated  the  phrase,  was  grim  as  his  words. 

"But,  Archie,  you  could  have  used  my  money, 
and  not — borrowed."  She  hated  to  pronounce  the 
word;  somehow  it  did  not  sound  right. 

"You  mean  that  you  would  give  me  another 
chance,  even  now?"  The  sudden  animation  with 
which  he  responded  was  more  disquieting  than  all 
the  rest. 

"To  speculate  with?  Oh,  no,  no!  Only  to  make 
things  right  with  McLean  &  Day." 

"Nothing  would  make  things  right  there!"  Archie 
declared;  and  again  despondency  took  him, — the 
black  fiend  that  had  driven  him  to  confession, — 
whose  presence  he  had  all  but  talked  down  in  his 
fluent  self-defence. 

"I  don't  see  why  not." 


The  One  Grace  285 

"Tom  is  turning  me  off," — and  his  whole  figure 
drooped,  with  his  voice. 

"Oh,  he  sha'n't  turn  you  off!"  Katherine  cried. 
"And  he  would  never  do  it!  He  thinks  too  much  of 
you;  he  always  speaks  so  well  of  you." 

" He  never  will  again;  I  'm  the  dirt  under  his  feet." 

"That  was  only  because  he  was  angry.  I  can  un- 
derstand that  so  well;  I  have  such  a  horrid  temper 
myself.  It  's  something  you  can't  allow  for,  Archie, 
because  you  have  a  sweet  disposition.  But  you  must 
not  mind  too  much  what  he  said  when  he  was  in  a 
passion. 

"He  didn't  seem  in  a  passion." 

"Yes,  but  people  are  so  different  when  they  are 
angry.  It  would  n't  be  like  Tom  to  storm  and  rage; 
he  is  always  slow  and  deep.  He  's  never  impulsive 
even  when  he  is  angry;  but  of  course  he  must  have 
been  angry  then.  Oh,  Archie,  you  don't  know  Tom 
as  I  do!" 

"  I  only  know  he  was  hard  as  the  nether  millstone. 
And  when  I  told  him  that  if  he  broke  up  the  concern, 
I  should, — oh,  Katherine!  I  should  lose  Winny — " 

"Lose  Winny?" 

"Yes;  old  Gerald  says  that  's  what  it  has  come  to, 
— and  he  's  worse  than  Tom." 

"And  Mr.  Gerald  knows?" 

"Yes." 

"Oh,  Archie,  why  did  n't  you  come  to  me  first?" 

"I— I  couldn't." 

"Of  course  you  could  n't,  because  you  thought  he 
had  a  right  to  know.  It  was  fine  of  you,  Archie;  I 
don't  think  I  ever  half  did  you  justice!  But — I  wish 
it  could  have  seemed  right  to  come  to  me  first!" 

"It  wouldn't  really  have  made  any   difference- 


286  Katherine  Day 

It  was — just  fate!  Do  you  believe  in  fate,  Kather- 
ine?"— and  Archie  lifted  his  head,  with  a  despairing 
look  that  smote  her  to  the  heart,  and  filled  her  with 
an  unreasoning  alarm.  No,  she  did  not  believe  in 
fate;  how  could  she?  And  yet,  if  Archie  believed 
in  it,  if  he  felt  the  pressure  of  a  terrible  malign  influ- 
ence, was  he  not  already  in  its  thrall?  That  must 
not  be ;  it  must  not  be ! 

Katherine  Day  was  as  sensitively  reticent  in  her 
religious  feeling  as  any  other  daughter  of  the  Puritans. 
She  had  never  in  her  life  spoken  confidentially  of 
sacred  things.  And  so  she  could  not  even  now  give 
full  expression  to  the  faith  that  was  in  her,  though 
it  rose  in  vehement  rejection  of  the  heathen  sym- 
bolism. She  only  said,  while  the  color  slowly  deep- 
ened in  her  cheeks,  and  her  voice  dropped  to  a  lower 
key: 

"  No,  Archie,  I  don't  believe  in  fate.  How  can  I — 
how  can  you? — when  we  remember, — what  we  really 
do  believe  in!" 

Archie  stood  abashed,  not  so  much  by  what  she 
had  said,  as  by  the  fact  that  she  had  said  it.  He  had 
been  on  his  feet  through  most  of  the  interview,  and 
now  she  too  was  standing. 

"It  's  easy  to  believe  in  all  that  sort  of  thing,"  he 
scoffed,  trying  to  ignore  the  impression  her  words 
had  made, — "when  you  are  on  the  winning  side." 

"It  may  be  easy  then,  but, — when  you  're  on  the 
losing  side  it  's  absolutely  necessary." 

She  had  come  over  to  him  and  was  carefully  smooth- 
ing back  a  lapel  of  his  coat  which  had  got  turned  the 
wrong  way.  He  laid  his  hand  on  hers,  stroking  it 
absently. 

"  I  wonder  why  you  always  make  me  feel  as  if  things 


The  One  Grace  287 

might  come  out  right  in  the  end? "  he  queried,  looking 
down  into  her  face,  while  his  own  cleared  a  bit. 

"Probably  because  I  feel  so  sure  myself,"  she  an- 
swered cheerfully.  "And  besides,  there  's  lots  to  do, 
and  when  there  are  things  to  do,  nothing  is  too  much 
to  expect." 

"Such  as?"  Archie  inquired,  while  his  old  hopeful- 
ness tried  feebly  to  lift  its  head. 

She  was  watching  his  face  for  just  that  change,  and 
when  she  saw  it  coming: — "First  of  all,"  she  cried, 
"let  's  go  out  and  look  at  the  stars !  There  's  a  beauty 
of  a  planet  shining  over  the  Littlefield  horse-chestnut 
tree,  now-a-nights.  I  don't  believe  you  've  so  much 
as  seen  it, — you  and  Winny." 

"Winny  doesn't  care  so  much  about  the  stars  as 
you  do,"  he  admitted,  as  they  closed  the  front  door 
behind  them,  and  stood  looking  westward.  "She  's 
more  fond  of  flowers." 

"Yes,  and  you  send  her  such  gorgeous  ones!  And, 
Archie,"  she  added,  a  little  timidly,  passing  her  hand 
through  his  arm  as  they  stood  looking  over  at  the  big 
planet,  just  getting  itself  entangled  in  the  thinning 
foliage  of  the  chestnut  top, — "Archie,  you  won't  feel 
that  you  've  got  to  scrimp  with  Winny,  now?  Little 
things  mean  a  lot  to  her, — I  suppose  they  stand  for 
other  things,  and  tha£  's  why  she  cares  so  much.  But, 
Archie,  I  care  almost  as  much  for  Winny  as  you  do, 
and,  you  know, — we  always  went  snacks,  you  and  I. " 

Archie  slipped  his  arm  over  his  sister's  shoulder 
in  the  old  brotherly  fashion,  thereby  dislodging  her 
hand  from  its  resting-place.  And  Katherine  wel- 
comed the  familiar  pressure;  it  was  more  natural 
than  that  she  should  lean  on  him. 

Then,  as  they  paced  the  veranda  together,  passing 


288  Katherine  Day 

and  repassing  the  windows  of  the  long  parlor  where 
grandmother  and  Aunt  Fanny  were  receiving  a  state 
visit  from  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Littlefield,  they  fell  into  a 
quiet,  practical  talk,  wherein  Katherine 's  cheerful 
optimism  gained  fast  upon  her  brother's  unnatural 
despondency.  Archie  was  perhaps  the  more  easily 
cheered  because  of  his  recognition  of  the  inherent 
unfitness  of  any  association  of  himself  with  misfortune. 
There  was  something  in  his  chagrins  and  apprehen- 
sions so  contrary  to  what  he  felt  to  be  the  proprieties 
of  the  case,  that  he  was  easily  persuaded  of  their  tran- 
sitoriness;  while  Katherine,  sharing  as  she  did  this 
unformulated  theory  with  regard  to  her  brother,  had 
the  further  support  of  a  deep,  sustaining  faith  in 
Tom's  magnanimity.  No  one  knew  Tom  as  she  did, 
she  told  herself.  He  had  a  rough  exterior,  but  it 
covered  a  tender  heart.  She  had  divined  it  before, 
but  only  lately  had  it  been  revealed  to  her.  Since 
that  Sunday, — could  it  be  but  a  week  ago? — she  had 
really  come  to  know  him,  and  she  believed, — yes, 
she  did  believe, — that  he  would  care  to  please  her. 
When  she  wrote  him  to  come  to  her  she  knew  it  would 
be  the  very  next  day,  and  on  Tuesday  evening  she 
was  glad  that  the  elders  of  the  family  were  taking 
high  tea  at  a  neighbor's  house.  Archie,  too,  was 
away.  He  had  gone  to  Winny.  His  respite  was  to 
be  continued  yet  a  few  days,  and  he  was  making  the 
most  of  it, — eagerly  sanguine,  direfully  despondent, 
by  turns,  but  carefully  guarding  his  varying  moods 
from  Winny,  who  liked  people  to  be  pleasant  and 
self- forgetful.  So  Katherine  sat  alone  by  the  sitting- 
room  drop-light,  turning  the  leaves  of  a  new  Atlantic. 
At  sight  of  Tom's  face  as  he  entered  the  room,  her 
heart  sank.  That  was  not  the  Tom  who  had  called 


The  One  Grace  289 

his  "good-by,  Katherine,"  as  he  drove  away  to  min- 
ister to  his  father.  It  was  not  even  the  Tom  whom 
she  had  quarrelled  with  so  lightly  there  on  the  high 
rock  looking  out  to  sea.  It  was  the  old  Tom,  but  an 
intensified  Tom,  shorn  of  the  new  gentleness. 

"You  're  very  good  to  come,"  she  said,  rising,  and 
holding  out  her  hand,  with  a  somewhat  hesitating 
gesture. 

But  he  seized  it  heartily  enough,  saying,  as  he  sat 
down  beside  her:  "I  should  have  come  out  in  a  day 
or  two  anyway,  as  soon  as  I  had  got  my  breath.  I 
suppose  you  know  of  this  miserable  business." 

"Oh,  yes;  Archie  has  told  me  everything.  That 
is  why  I  wanted  to  see  you.  We  are  so  unhappy 
about  it." 

"  I  knew  you  would  feel  it,  Katherine,  and  I  'm  no 
end  sorry.  It  's  awfully  hard  on  you!" — and  Tom 
felt  that  for  the  moment  he  was  justified  in  pitying 
his  cousin  as  tenderly  as  he  would. 

"It  is  very  bad,  I  suppose?" — She  was  touched  by 
that  tenderness  of  his  tone,  touched  and  reassured; 
that  was  the  new  something  in  him  which  she  had 
been  building  on. 

"Not  so  bad  as  I  thought  at  first,"  he  rejoined. 
"Things  are  straightening  themselves  out  better  than 
I  could  have  believed.  Tell  you  what,  though,  Kath- 
erine, it  looked  pretty  squally  yesterday.  I  was  n't 
half  sure  of  weathering  it." 

"But  Tom,  you  know — you  must  know  of  course 
— that  as  far  as  the  money  goes, — " 

"Well?" 

"Why,  as  far  as  the  money  goes, — what  Archie 
and  I  have  is  as  much  his  as  mine." 

"If  that  is  n't  just  like  a  girl!"  Tom  exclaimed, — 
19 


290  Katherine  Day 

poor,  blundering,  cock-sure  Tom.  "Why,  child,  you 
know  as  well  as  I  do  that  that  has  all  been  divided, 
and  that  Archie  has  n't  the  ghost  of  a  claim  on  your 
property." 

"Indeed  he  has  a  claim!"  Katherine  declared 
stoutly.  "He  has  a  claim  on  everything  of  mine, — 
as  I  have  on  everything  of  his,"  she  hastened  to  add, 
fearing  to  assume  a  monopoly  of  generosity.  "You 
don't  suppose  Archie  would  see  me  suffer?" 

" Of  course  he  would  n't!  It  's  a  man's  business  to 
look  after  the  women  of  his  family.  But  a  girl — 

"Stop,  Tom!  don't  say  hackneyed  things.  A  girl 
has  just  as  much  at  stake  in  the  family  honor  as  a 
man.  If  the  family  is  in  debt  the  debt  must  be  paid 
by  the  family;  you  know  that  as  well  as  I  do. " 

"  I  know  that  you  are  talking  sheer  nonsense.  Do 
you  suppose  I  would  touch  a  cent  of  your  money  if  I 
were  starving?" 

"  No,  I  don 't  suppose  you  would  touch  a  cent  of  my 
money,  Tom  McLean;  any  more  than  I  would  of 
yours,"  she  added  hotly.  "  But  this  is  not  my  money, 
really;  it  is  family  money.  And  it  is  n't  even  that 
one  single  second  after  the  family  is  in  debt.  Ah, 
Tom,  be  reasonable!  Do  forget  all  those  silly,  artificial 
prejudices  and  let  us  talk  sensibly.  What  does  Archie 
owe  McLean  &  Day?" 

It  seemed  as  if  the  name  of  the  firm,  that  firm  he 
had  been  so  proud  of,  that  firm  on  which  he  had 
staked  such  high  hopes,  were  more  than  he  could  bear 
with  equanimity.  But  Tom,  as  Katherine  had  de- 
clared, was  not  one  to  rage  and  storm ;  he  could  only 
harden  and  repel.  He  set  his  chin  very  stiff,  and  his 
face  grew  rigid  as  he  answered: 

"Archie  has  but  one  obligation  toward  McLean  & 


The  One  Grace  291 

Day  which  he  is  in  a  position  to  fulfil.  He  owes  it  to 
McLean  &  Day  to  resign  from  the  firm." 

Katherine  grew  white. 

"O,  Tom!  take  that  back!  Please  take  that  back, 
— now, — quick, — before  you  begin  to  mean  it." 

"Begin  to  mean  it?  Of  course  I  mean  it,  Kather- 
ine! What  else  should  I  mean?" 

"But,  Tom,  it  would  be  Archie's  ruin." 

"Archie  has  ruined  himself,"  he  asserted  stubbornly. 

"He  has  not!"  Katherine  cried.  "You  know  he 
has  not!  He  has  been  foolish, — reckless, — weak, —  " 
she  yielded  one  point  after  the  other,  as  if  to  propi- 
tiate him;  "but — 

"He  has  been  dishonorable,"  said  Tom,  quietly, 
implacably. 

"O  Tom!  don't  say  that!  It  is  a  wicked,  cruel 
thing  to  say,  and  you  don't  mean  it.  Archie  could  n't 
be  dishonorable !  He  thought  he  had  a  right  to  specu- 
late with  his  own  money,  he  thought  he  had  a  right 
to  borrow  of  the  firm — " 

"Borrow!"  Tom  jeered;  and  because  it  was  the 
ugly  materialization  of  her  own  impalpable  suspicion, 
she  resented  it  a  thousandfold. 

"You  shall  not  speak  to  me  like  that!"  she  cried, 
springing  to  her  feet. 

"If  I  am  to  speak  at  all  I  must  speak  the  truth," 
he  declared,  with  a  lowering  calm  that  filled  her  with 
a  great  foreboding.  He,  too,  was  on  his  feet  now. — 
"  I  shall  not  go  out  of  my  way  to  persecute  Archie, 
but  when  I  am  forced  to  speak  of  him  I  shall  not 
quibble." 

"And  because  you  put  hard  names  to  his  mistakes 
and  shortcomings,  because  you  choose  to  misunder- 
stand him,  you  will  deliberately  blight  his  life?" 


292  Katherine  Day 

"Because  I  see  him  as  he  is,  I  will  have  nothing 
more  to  do  with  him." 

Katherine  knew  that  he  was  in  dead  earnest.  If  it 
had  been  anybody  but  Tom  she  would  have  urged  her 
suit  with  a  persistence  that  ignored  opposition.  But 
Tom  meant  what  he  said.  Ah,  how  mistaken  she  had 
been!  How  utterly  she  had  misconceived  him!  The 
hardness  that  she  had  thought  but  an  outer  crust  was 
his  very  substance  and  centre.  The  fleeting  tender- 
ness that  had  beguiled  her  to — oh,  to  what  had  it  not 
beguiled  her? — had  but  touched  the  surface,  as  the 
sun  touches  and  warms  the  surface  of  the  unfruitful 
rock. 

"Then  Tom,"  she  said,  with  a  chill  that  struck  him 
through  and  through, — as  estranging  as  if  fire  had 
frozen  him, — "we  will  have  nothing  more  to  do  with 
one  another, — you  and  we!" — and  she  made  as  if  to 
pass  him  by  and  leave  the  room. 

But  he  put  out  a  detaining  hand. 

"Katherine,"  he  cried;  "don't  speak  so!  Nothing 
can  ever  come  between  you  and  me." 

"Something  has  come  between  us,"  she  answered 
wearily,  the  spirit  quite  gone  from  face  and  voice.  It 
was  far  more  alarming  than  her  anger. 

"  It  shall  not!"  he  cried. 

"You  mean?" — and  she  caught  her  breath  with  a 
sudden  hope  that  she  knew  to  be  vain. 

"  I  mean  that  we  are  friends,  you  and  I.  I  mean, — 
oh,  Katherine,  I  mean  that  we  can't  get  on  without 
each  other,  and  that — " 

"And  that  for  the  sake  of  our  friendship  you  will  do 
me  the  one  grace  I  ever  asked  of  you  ? ' ' 

He  was  silent, — silent  for  several  seconds.  Did  he 
waver?  She  leaned  her  hand  upon  the  edge  of  the 


The  One  Grace  293 

door.  She  was  trying  to  think  only  of  Archie,  but 
oh!  if  Tom  were  to  yield,  what  would  Archie  be  for 
them,  even  Archie,  in  that  moment  of  surrender? 

Katherine  held  her  breath;  Tom  breathed  but  the 
deeper.  It  was  a  severe  test,  but  he  felt  that  he  was 
standing  it.  Was  a  man  to  be  dictated  to  in  the  seri- 
ous concerns  of  life  by  a  mere  girl,  even  if  that  girl 
was  Katherine?  He  must  be  gentle  with  her;  he  hated 
to  hurt  her,  for  oh !  he  was  fond  of  her ;  he  had  never 
been  more  tenderly  aware  of  his  affection  for  her  than 
at  this  moment  when  he  must  oppose  and  wound  her. 

"  Dear  Katherine,"  he  said  at  last,  in  a  tone  of  depre- 
cating indulgence,  than  which  nothing  could  have  been 
more  galling;  "you  must  not  ask  that.  No  man  of 
sense  could  grant  it.  I  've  got  to  manage  my  business 
concerns  according  to  my  own  judgment.  In  every- 
thing else — " 

"There  is  nothing  else,"  she  flung  back.  In  the 
sudden  revulsion  of  feeling  from  the  moment's  hope, 
the  moment's  passionate  inclining  of  the  heart  toward 
him,  she  was  possessed  by  the  imperative  need  of  shat- 
tering the  whole  structure  of  her  relation  with  him. 
She  saw  that  he  recoiled  at  her  words.  He  would  not 
yield,  no! — but  he  should  suffer. 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  and  the  scorn  of  her  voice  was 
more  injurious  than  her  words;  "I  am  glad  it  is  not 
you  that  are  my  brother!  I  should  be  so  ashamed!" 

"Katherine!" — he  took  a  step  toward  her, — pro- 
testing,— but  she  had  passed  swiftly  out  of  the  door 
and  up  the  stairs.  He  heard  her  steps  cross  the  room 
overhead,  and  then  silence  fell 'upon  the  house. 

Tom  stood,  for  many  minutes,  exactly  where  she 
had  left  him,  listening  for  some  movement  in  the 
chamber  overhead.  There  was  something  strange 


294  Katharine  Day 

and  unnatural  in  the  silence.  His  mind  recurred  to 
that  deserted  house  by  the  lonely  roadside  where  the 
woman  had  died.  He  remembered  the  desolation  of 
those  lidless  windows.  How  still  it  must  have  been 
in  there  after  the  sound  of  their  horses'  hoofs  had  died 
away,  after  the  sound  of  their  voices,  Katherine's  and 
his,  had  ceased.  Ceased!  And  so  they  had.  They 
had  said  their  last  word.  Tom  was  too  much  in 
earnest  in  his  own  utterances  to  fail  to  take  others 
seriously.  Katherine  was  hasty,  often,  but  when 
she  had  cried:  "There  is  nothing  else!"  she  had 
meant  it.  And  when  she  had  said  those  last,  bitter 
words,  she  had  known  well  that  they  were  final. 

Tom  pulled  himself  together  with  a  strong  effort. 
Well,  there  would  be  nothing  more  to  interfere  with 
him  and  his  career.  A  narrow  escape,  he  told  him- 
self, as  he  left  the  house,  and  strode  down  the  path 
where  he  had  watched  the  departing  form  of  Paul 
Stuyvesant  only  a  few  months  ago.  A  narrow 
escape. 

He  paused  at  the  gate,  and  looked  up  at  the  win- 
dows of  Katherine's  room.  They  were  quite  dark. 
That  was  as  it  should  be.  He  should  have  been  sorry 
to  see  anything  so  cheerful  as  a  light.  She  ought  to  be 
sitting  in  the  dark. 

The  gate  closed  behind  him  with  a  sharp  click,  and 
Tom  started  to  walk  into  town,  but  not  quite  with 
his  usual  vigorous  tread.  Yes;  he  had  made  his  es- 
cape, he  had  held  his  own,  but, — oh,  how  it  had  hurt! 


CHAPTER  XIII 

BROTHER    AND    SISTER 

"  Could  I  wrestle  to  raise  him  from  sorrow,  grow  poor  to 

enrich, 
To  fill  up  his  life,  starve  my  own  out,  I  would." 

CATHERINE  heard  the  sharp  click  of  the  gate 
fx  and  knew  that  Tom  was  gone.  There  were 
other  things  she  knew  as  well,  and  that  sent  a  pang 
of  self-terror  to  her  heart,  casting  out,  for  the  mo- 
ment, the  thought  of  Archie  himself.  She  sat  for 
many  minutes,  letting  the  mere  unreasoning  pain 
possess  her  soul.  There  was  luxury  in  that  pain, 
luxury  in  its  utter  selfishness.  Chagrin,  mortifica- 
tion, heartache; — these  were  her  own,  these  could  be 
borne.  She  had  cared  for  Tom,  and  he  had  not  cared 
for  her;  she  said  that  to  herself  over  and  over  again. 
Well,  so  it  had  been  with  Cousin  Elmira,  and  after  a 
while  she  had  died,  and  there  was  an  end  of  it.  Kath- 
erine,  too,  could  bear  this  thing.  She  had  been  de- 
ceived, cruelly  deceived,  but  there  was  no  one  to 
blame  but  herself.  And — would  she  have  had  it 
otherwise?  As  she  looked  back  over  the  past  week, 
she  seemed  to  forget  the  self-conflicts  and  the  self- 
chidings,  the  rebellion  against  her  own  heart.  She 
knew  only  that  she  had  possessed  for  those  short 
days  something  unspeakably  precious.  Yes,  she  had 


296  Katherine  Day 

possessed  it;  it  had  been  an  illusion,  but  it  had 
been  hers. 

She  remembered  how  she  had  sat  in  that  very  win- 
dow, looking  over  at  that  very  planet  glowing  above 
the  great  horse-chestnut  tree,  trying  to  think  only  of 
high  and  beautiful  things  such  as  the  stars  were  a 
symbol  of, — it  was  the  form  her  devotions  had  been 
wont  to  take  ever  since  she  was  a  little  child, — and 
how,  as  she  sat  watching  the  great,  mysterious  light, 
she  had  been  conscious  of  a  new  depth  within  her 
own  soul  wherein  the  wonderful  heavenly  light  found 
a  new  and  purer  reflection.  And  in  the  pain  of  it, 
too,  there  was  a  depth  and  preciousness.  She  did 
not  in  the  least  wish  that  it  had  never  been.  Only 
the  thought  of  Tom,  the  actual  Tom  as  she  knew  him, 
was  slipping  away  from  out  this  deep  and  precious 
sanctuary  of  the  spirit,  and  to  follow  him  was  to  leave 
a  safe,  sad  haven  and  to  put  forth  upon  tossing  break- 
ers. She  could  see  him  tramping  into  town,  with  his 
firm,  needlessly  heavy  step;  she  could  picture  to  her- 
self the  determination  in  his  face  and  figure,  the  very 
resolution  in  his  soul.  And  she  knew  there  was  no 
hope  for  Archie. 

Katherine  sprang  to  her  feet.  Her  own  trouble  she 
could  bear,  but  Archie's  misfortune,  Archie's  ruin, 
were  intolerable  to  her  spirit.  She  turned  from  the 
window,  away  from  the  beautiful  planet  that  found 
no  reflection  in  the  pain  for  Archie,  and,  hastening 
down  the  stairs,  with  the  same  urgent,  fleeing  tread 
with  which  she  had  mounted  them,  she  passed  into 
the  long  parlor  where  the  piano  stood. 

There  was  the  pleasant  half-light  there,  coming 
from  the  adjoining  hall,  the  light  she  usually  chose 
for  playing;  but  that  would  not  serve  her  turn  to- 


Brother  and  Sister  297 

night.  She  lighted  the  gas  jets  in  the  big  chandelier, 
and,  opening  her  Well-tempered  Clavichord  she  began 
a  hard  tussle  with  old  Bach.  She  had  only  half 
learned  the  prelude  she  was  working  on;  it  seemed 
to  her  that  if  she  could  play  it  perfectly  before  she 
was  interrupted  it  would  be  a  good  sign.  She  worked 
hard,  with  a  great  intensity  of  application,  but — it 
was  Archie  himself  that  interrupted  her. 

He  came  in,  with  uncertain  step,  and  a  wild,  hag- 
gard look  in  his  face,  and,  crossing  the  room,  he 
stood  close  beside  her. 

"They.'ve  turned  me  down,"  he  said. 

"They?" 

"Yes;   Mr.  Gerald  did  it,  and  Winny — let  him!" 

Katherine's  hands  fell  upon  the  keys  in  discordant 
protest. 

"But  he  promised  to  wait,  he  promised  to  wait  till 
Tom—" 

"  He  met  Tom  in  the  street,  just  now,  and — he  asked 
him." 

"And  Tom?" 

"Tom  's  a  brute!"  cried  Archie,  while  an  ugly  look 
of  hate,  all  the  uglier  because  of  its  impotence,  crossed 
his  face. 

"If  you  mean  he  has  n't  got  a  heart,  I  'm  afraid 
you  're  right.  And  I  went  and  thought  he  had,"  she 
added,  sadly,  as  if  she  had  been  speaking  to  herself. 

"Thinking  things  doesn't  make  them  true, — un- 
fortunately. Anyhow,  whether  you  think  so  or  not, 
I  'm  done  for!" — and  Archie  threw  himself  into  a  big 
arm-chair  and  stared  up  at  the  flaming  chandelier. 

" No,  no,  Archie!  You  're  not  done  for!  Not  even 
if  the  worse  comes  to  the  worst."  She  had  crossed 
swiftly  to  him  and  had  dropped  upon  the  arm  of  his 


298  Katharine  Day 

chair,  and  laid  a  strong,  kind,  urgent  hand  across  his 
shoulder.  "  But  it  sha'  n't  come  to  the  worst.  Winny 
shall  not  let  it!  It  's  all  in  her  hands." 

Then  Archie  looked  away  from  the  glaring  lights, 
and,  reaching  up  to  the  hand  upon  his  shoulder,  he 
brought  it  forward  where  his  eyes  could  rest  upon  it. 
He  sat  for  a  moment  regarding  absently  the  beautiful, 
supple  fingers,  feeling  the  cool  clasp  of  the  palm  about 
his  own ;  and,  for  the  moment,  it  seemed  as  if  he  were 
gathering  strength  from  the  contemplation  of  it. 
Then  Katherine,  looking  down  and  watching  him 
intently,  caught  a  sudden,  nerveless  droop. of  hand 
and  head.  A  new  turn  of  thought  had  touched  and 
wounded  his  quivering  susceptibility. 

"  Winny 's  hands  are  not  strong — like  yours,"  he 
said,  dejectedly;  "they  '11  let  go, — easily." 

"Oh,  no!  not  for  good  and  all!  She  '11  come  back 
to  you;  I  know  she  will! — She  must!  Oh,  Archie, 
you  forget  that  she  loves  you." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know, —  '  and  he  shook  his  head 
wearily. 

Archie  had  seen  Winny 's  face  when  her  father  asked 
if  she  wished  to  marry  a  dishonest  beggar.  He 
had  not  even  forbidden  her;  he  had  only  asked  the 
question.  Archie  had  seen  the  fright,  the  shock,  the 
recoil, — strange  and  unbecoming  to  those  flowerlike 
features, — but  he  had  looked  in  vain  for  the  "wish" 
her  father  challenged.  She  had  only  said:  "I  don't 
understand," — and  her  eyes  had  wavered  before  the 
supplication  of  Archie's.  Estranged,  suspicious,  she 
had  moved  a  step  nearer  to  her  father.  And  Archie, 
too  proud  to  beg  an  alms,  had  seized  his  hat  and  left 
them  standing  there,  father  and  daughter,  in  a  strange, 
unnatural  unity  of  interest  and  feeling. 


Brother  and  Sister  299 

And  the  next  morning,  when  Katherine  went  to 
Winny,  eager  with  sisterly  faith  and  sympathy,  she 
found  her  tearful  and  chagrined,  but  utterly  unre- 
sponsive. 

"And  you  really  mean,"  Katherine  expostulated, 
warmly, — "you  really  mean  that  you  will  turn 
away  from  the  man  you  love  just  because  he  has  been 
unfortunate  ? ' ' 

"  Papa  says  it  's  worse  than  that,"  was  the  stubborn 
answer. 

' '  Your  father  is — mistaken . ' '  Katherine  forced  her- 
self to  be  moderate.  "  He  does  n't  understand  about  it. " 

"That  's  a  very  silly  thing  to  say,  Katherine.  As 
if  papa  did  not  understand  about  such  things  better 
than  we  girls!" 

"But,  Winny,  you  love  Archie;  and  when  we  love 
a  person  we  can  see  clearer  and  truer  than  any  one 
else.  Look  into  your  own  heart,  Winny!  Don't 
you  know  that  you  could  n't  have  loved  a  man  who 
was — what  your  father  accuses  Archie  of  being?" 

"  No, — I  don't  know  anything  of  the  kind.  I  don't 
understand  such  things,  and, — anyway,  we  should  n't 
have  anything  to  live  on." 

There  spoke  the  Winny  that  Katherine  had  known 
of  old;  Winny  the  cautious,  the  calculating,  the 
exacting.  It  was  only  the  first  of  these  terms  that 
Katherine  allowed  herself  to. apply  to  her  friend,  but 
it  was  inclusive,  had  she  but  known  it. 

And  now,  at  least,  she  could  take  hope, — for  was  it 
not  in  her  power  to  set  at  rest  Winny 's  practical  mis- 
givings ? 

"Oh,  yes,"  she  cried.  "You  would  have  enough 
to  live  on.  There  's  lots  of  the  family  money  left, 
and  I, — I  shall  need  very  little  now,  Winny,  for — I 


300  Katharine  Day 

have  plans."  Katherine's  mind  was  dwelling  more 
than  ever,  in  these  troublous  days,  upon  the  thought 
of  Sister  Dora. 

"Are  you  going  to  marry  that  friend  of  Archie's?" 
Winny  cried. 

"Indeed  I  'm  not  going  to  marry  any  friend  of 
Archie's!"  Katherine  protested.  "Who  ever  put 
such  a  thing  into  your  head?" 

"Oh,  Archie  tells  me  everything!" — with  a  flicker- 
ing of  coquetry  that  gave  Katherine  an  instant's 
hope.  But  the  coquetry  went  out  in  a  sudden  chill 
and  lassitude.  "Anyway,  it  doesn't  make  any 
difference  about  your  plans,"  she  added  dejectedly. 
"They  could  n't  affect  us." 

"But  why  not,  Winny,  if  Archie  were  to  have 
enough  to  live  on?" 

The  girl  shook  her  head,  dully. 

"Papa  says  if  he  had  ten  fortunes  he  would  go 
through  them  all." 

"  Oh,  Winny !  that  is  not  true !  It  was  only  for  your 
sake  that  he  tried  to  get  rich  too  fast.  If  you  were 
to  make  him  believe  that  you  did  not  care  about 
money,  if  he  knew  you  were  content,  he  would  do 
exactly  as  you  wished.  I  know  he  would." 

Then  Winny  roused  again,  and  drawing  herself 
severely  away  from  her  visitor's  supplicating  touch: 
"Katherine,"  she  cried,  "I  don't  see  how  you  can 
advise  me  to  do  wrong!" 

"But  it  would  not  be  wrong!" 

"  Indeed  it  would  be  wrong, — to  disobey  papa." 

"But  Winny—" 

"I  really  think,  Katherine,  I  ought  n't  to  listen  to 
you  any  longer.  I  must  do  what  is  right,  and  you 
only  make  it  harder  for  me.  I  suppose  you  don't 


Brother  and  Sister  301 

think," — and  the  pretty  lips  quivered  in  sudden  self- 
pity, — "I  suppose  you  don't  think  anything  about 
what  I  suffer!" 

"Indeed  I  do,  Winny;  indeed  I  do,  darling," — and 
in  an  instant  she  was  by  Winny 's  side  again,  and 
Winny 's  head  was  resting  on  her  shoulder,  while  the 
slight  frame  shook  with  sobs.  "  Indeed  I  do  know 
that  you  suffer,  and  that  is  what  I  want  to  save  you 
from.  But  never  mind,  darling.  We  shall  find  a 
way.  Don't  cry,  dear,  don't  cry! — unless  it  helps 
you  to  bear  it," — and  Katherine,  seized  by  a  sudden 
craving  for  that  easy  outlet,  let. her  own  tears  come. 

They  were  very  young,  these  two  untried  souls, 
caught  so  suddenly  in  the  stern  grasp  of  life.  Each 
must  meet  the  crisis  according  to  the  law  of  her  na- 
ture, the  weak  and  the  strong,  the  generous  and  the 
selfish;  but,  for  the  moment,  they  found  consolation, 
as  any  other  young  things  might  have  done,  sobbing 
their  hearts  out  in  one  another's  arms. 

Katherine  thought  of  those  tears  in  the  days  that 
followed;  and  because  she  always  interpreted  them 
in  terms  of  her  own  more  opulent  nature,  she  did  not 
quite  lose  courage,  even  when  Archie,  the  ever  san- 
guine, recognized  the  hopelessness  of  his  cause. 

That  the  lovers  were  still  allowed  to  meet,  was  con- 
clusive evidence  of  her  father's  confidence  in  Winny, 
— a  confidence  that  was  perhaps  not  ill-founded.  It 
was  based,  indeed,  upon  certain  fundamental  traits 
that  the  two  had  in  common,  and  from  which  it  was 
safe  to  argue  that  the  daughter  was  scarcely  more 
likely  than  the  father  to  be  betrayed  into  sacrificing 
worldly  interest  to  a  passion  of  the  heart. 

As  for  Archie,  it  soon  became  distressfully  clear  to 
him  that  not  much  was  to  be  gained,  for  the  present 


3O2  Katharine  Day 

at  least,  from  a  personal  appeal  to  Winny.  He  did 
not  for  a  moment  place  the  true  interpretation  upon 
her  action.  It  was  filial  obedience,  it  was  natural 
timidity,  it  was, — yes,  it  was  the  cruel  disillusion- 
ment. She  had  thought  him  better  than  he  was,  and 
she  was  so  ideal  a  creature,  her  sense  of  honor  was  so 
delicate,  that  she  could  not  hold  to  one  whom  she 
had  ceased  to  trust. 

"Everything  is  changed,  Archie,"  she  would  say, 
with  the  sweetest,  most  pensive  look  in  her  lovely 
eyes,  —  those  charming  eyes  that  had  enthralled 
the  little  Katherine  .so  long  ago.  "It  is  not  that  I 
don't  love  you.  Of  course,  love,  a  love  like  mine,  is 
not  to  be  overcome  in  a  moment.  But, — no!" — as 
the  object  of  this  unique  affection  made  a  movement 
as  if  to  profit  by  the  admission  of  it, — "Don't  come 
near  me,  Archie!  We  are  bound  in  honor  to  do  all 
we  can  to  overcome  it." 

"Indeed  we  are  not  bound  to  any  such  thing!  I 
am  not  bound  in  honor  to  anything  of  the  kind! " 

"That  's  what  papa  says,"  she  answered  naively. 
"If  he  did  not  trust  me  so  perfectly,  he  would  never 
let  me  see  you  as  I  do.  But  he  knows  I  could  never 
deceive  him." 

"And  do  you  mean  that  you  take  your  father's 
word  about  my  character  ? ' ' 

"  I  take  papa's  word  about  everything  that  he  un- 
derstands better  than  I  do, — like  business  matters, 
or  business  character,  which  you  know  are  very  im- 
portant. But  if  he  were  to  undertake  to  tell  me  that 
you  were  not  suited  to  me,  that  I  had  been  mistaken  in 
thinking  that  you  could  have  made  me  happy  if  things 
had  been  different,  why, — he  could  n't  influence  me 
the  least  little  bit." 


Brother  and  Sister  303 

"But,  Winny!  if  you  know  I  am  suited  to  you,  if 
you  know  I  could  have  made  you  happy — " 

Then  Winny  would  draw  herself  up  and  look  very 
sternly  at  the  unhappy  petitioner.  "You  forget, 
Archie,"  she  would  admonish  him,  "you  forget  that 
I  am  on  my  honor." 

Poor  Archie!  If  he  forgot  that  important  fact  it 
was  from  no  lack  of  reminders ;  for  not  a  day  went  by 
that  he  did  not  see  Winny, — not  a  day  that  he  did 
not  plead  with  her,  and  that  he  did  not  meet  with  the 
same  repulse.  He  called  himself  a  miserable  poltroon 
for  not  making  an  end  of  the  wretched  business;  yet 
deep  down  within  him  was  always  the  hope  that  she 
would  relent, — that  she  would  listen,  if  not  to  his  be- 
seechings,  then  to  the  voice  of  her  own  heart.  For 
had  she  not  declared  that  she  loved  him  still? 

And  so  this  pitiful  state  of  affairs  went  on,  until,  at 
last,  a  shocking  thing  occurred,  putting  an  end,  once 
for  all,  to  hopes  and  pleadings. 

It  was  a  few  weeks  after  Gerald's  ultimatum  had 
gone  forth,  that  Winny  was  calling  upon  Katherine 
late  one  afternoon,  when  Archie  suddenly  appeared 
at  the  parlor  door,  and  as  he  crossed  the  room  both 
girls  saw  that  he  was  not  himself.  His  face  was 
flushed,  his  eyes  were  dull,  and  that  free  carriage  of 
the  head,  in  the  absence  of  which  he  seemed  another 
man,  was  changed  into  a  limp,  hang-dog  air,  that  was 
but  accentuated  as  he  found  himself  in  Winny's 
presence. 

"Good-afternoon,  Miss — Miss  Gerald,"  he  stuttered, 
coming  toward  her,  with  uneven  gait  and  uncertain 
motion  of  the  outstretched  hand.  Winny  moved 
away,  shuddering,  and  Archie,  seeing  the  gesture  of 
repulsion,  stumbled  into  a  chair,  and  sat  staring  at  her. 


304  Katharine  Day 

"Archie!  You  are  ill!"  cried  Katherine,  hurrying 
to  his  side. 

"  He  is  drunk,"  said  Winny,  the  cold  disgust  in  her 
tone  cutting  like  a  dull,  rending  knife  through  her 
words. 

Another  moment,  and  brother  and  sister  were  alone 
together. 

" They  have  hurt  you,  Archie!  Oh,  they  have  hurt 
you!"  Katherine  was  kneeling  at  his  side,  clinging 
to  his  hot,  dry  hands.  "  Oh,  my  dear!  how  they  have 
hurt  you!" 

The  fixed,  glassy  stare  yielded;  his  glance  wavered 
an  instant,  and  then  their  eyes  met.  In  Katherine's, 
dominating  the  pain,  the  dismay,  of  the  sudden  shock 
was  the  wonderful  divining  tenderness  that  the 
mother  knows,  the  mother  who  in  the  passion  of  heal- 
ing forgets  to  rebuke.  And  Archie,  unmanned,  un- 
strung, craving  only  consolation  in  his  pitiful  state, 
bent  his  head  upon  her  breast  as  a  little  child  might 
have  done,  while  sobs,  the  sobs  of  a  little  child  in  his 
mother's  arms,  shook  his  frame.  It  was  only  for  a 
moment;  but  in  that  moment  Katherine  knew  that 
one  more  great  reversal  had  accomplished  itself  in  her 
inner  life.  The  old  bond  to  the  big  brother,  the  pride, 
the  reliance,  the  joy,  had  transformed  itself  into  some- 
thing infinitely  pitiful,  infinitely  precious,  but  as  yet 
all  strange  and  new. 

"You  are  ill,  dear,"  she  said,  as  he  lifted  his 
head,  with  an  effort  at  self-control.  "You  are  ill — it 
was  an  accident."  He  opened  his  lips  and  began  a 
stammering  explanation.  "I  know,  I  know,"  she 
interposed;  "I  understand  it  all.  It  was  just — an 
accident.  It  will  never  happen  again.  But  now,  we 
must  go  up-stairs,"  and  she  rose  to  her  feet,  hoping 


Brother  and  Sister  305 

that  he  would  do  the  same.  "Grandmother  and 
Aunt  Fanny  will  be  coming  in  a  few  minutes  and — 
you  don't  want  to  see  them;  do  you,  dear?  You 
don't  feel  able  to." 

He  shook  his  head  miserably. 

"No;  I  don't  want  to  see  anybody,"  he  muttered. 
"I  'm  a  sick  man;  that  's  what  they  call  the  Turk, 
don't  you  know?  The  sick  man  of  Europe!  There  's 
another  thing  they  call  him.  What  is  it?  You  know 
what  it  is.  Don't  be  stupid,  Katherine!  It  isn't 
like  you  to  be  stupid!"  Something  of  the  old  im- 
perativeness, the  old  big-brotherliness  crossed  his 
voice; — just  the  ghost  of  a  thing  that  was  dead. 

"Come,  dear,"  she  begged;  "please  come!  You 
don't  want  to  see  anybody." 

"But  why  don't  you  tell  me  what  the  other  thing 
is?"  he  repeated,  fretfully. 

He  had  got  upon  his  feet,  yielding,  partly  to  the 
grasp  of  her  hand,  partly  to  the  force  of  her  will. 
Resting  his  arm  upon  her  shoulder,  and  leaning 
heavily,  he  walked  with  her  to  the  stairs,  up  which 
he  passed,  clinging  to  the  balustrade.  Half  way  up, 
his  foot  paused,  anfl  he  gave  a  short  laugh. 

"I  've  got  it,"  he  said;  "I  've  got  it!  The  un- 
speakable Turk!  That  's  it!" 

Turning,  he  looked  down  upon  her,  as  she  stood  on 
the  stair  below,  close  behind  him,  lest  he  should 
stumble.  Caught  thus  at  unawares,  her  face  was 
anxious  and  strained.  Again  he  gave  a  foolish, 
embarrassed  laugh. 

"Funny,  is  n!t  it?"  he  maundered,  as  he  turned 
and  proceeded  on  his  way.  And  again,  as  he  threw 
himself  upon  his  bed, — "Funny,  isn't  it?" 

"You  '11  tell  me  all  about  it,  by  and  by,"  she  said, 


306  Katherine  Day 

gently,  as  she  stooped  to  spread  an  old  afghan  over 
him.  It  was  one  she  had  made  for  his  college  room 
when  he  was  a  freshman.  It  was  faded  now,  and 
rather  shabby,  but  the  meshes  had  held  fast. 

Archie  looked  up,  with  momentary  intelligence. 
The  bodily  relaxation  seemed  to  bring  a  relaxation 
of  the  unnatural  mental  twist. 

"  Not  much  to  tell,"  he  made  an  effort  to  say.  "  I 
just  signed  the  papers  Tom  wanted,  and  then, — I 
took  a  glass  for  good  luck." 

His  eyes  closed  heavily,  and  Katherine,  pressing 
her  hand  upon  his  throbbing  temples,  heard  him 
mutter,  already  half  asleep:  "The  unspeakable! 
Funny,  is  n't  it?" 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE    RUNAWAY 

"  Echoes  die  off,  scarcely  reverberate 
Forever, — why  should  ill  keep  echoing  ill, 
And  never  let  our  ears  have  done  with  noise?" 

ATHERINE  was  right;  it  had  been  an  accident, 
and  it  was  not  likely  to  occur  again.  Yet  that 
offence  of  Archie's,  though  but  a  detached  incident, 
significant  rather  of  a  general  weakness  of  character 
than  of  a  specific  evil  tendency,  was  destined  to  have 
a  decisive  influence,  not  only  upon  the  fastidious 
Winny,  but  upon  the  delinquent  himself. 

It  was  not,  to  be  sure,  his  first  excess  of  the  kind ; 
his  college  record,  as  we  know,  was  not  immaculate. 
But  never  before  had  he  experienced  the  sense  of  utter 
degradation  that  possessed  him  when  he  awoke  from 
that  night's  sleep.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  had 
deliberately  got  drunk,  not  beguiled  by  the  allurements 
of  conviviality,  but  in  obedience  to  a  cowardly  animal 
instinct  that  counselled  escape  from  pain  at  any  price. 

Up  to  the  time  that  he  had  actually  signed  the 
papers  dissolving  the  partnership  of  McLean  &  Day, 
Archie  had  always  cherished  a  flickering  hope  that 
some  miracle  might  intervene  to  save  him, — an  in- 
credible change  of  heart  in  Tom,  an  impossible  turn 
in  his  own  business  affairs, — something  as  little  to  be 


308  Katharine  Day 

foreseen  as  the  succession  of  mischances  which  had 
brought  about  his  ruin.  This  little  flame  of  hope  he 
had  nursed  and  tended,  with  the  fatuity  of  an  over- 
sanguine  temperament,  of  a  will  untrained  to  more 
legitimate  exercise.  Hence,  the  final  act  in  that 
small  business  tragedy,  inevitable  as  it  had  been, 
came  upon  him  with  the  shock  of  an  intolerable  catas- 
trophe. In  signing  the  dissolution  of  partnership  he 
felt  himself  to  be  setting  his  hand  to  the  dissolution 
of  the  whole  fabric  of  his  life,  and  his  tortured  sen- 
sibility, his  very  nerves,  cried  out  for  oblivion.  Well, 
he  had  got  it,  for  an  hour,  and  what  had  it  cost  him? 

As  he  awoke  in  the  early  morning  and  lay  ponder- 
ing the  miserable  tangle  he  had  made  of  his  life,  it  was 
with  a  self-loathing  that  was  little  short  of  abject, — 
abject  because  it  comprised  as  yet  no  impulse  of  self- 
recovery.  He,  Archie  Day,  had  got  drunk  in  broad 
daylight. 

He  had  a  hideous  picture  of  himself,  standing  at 
the  hotel  bar,  filling  and  refilling  a  small  glass  from  an 
evil-looking  black  bottle,  and  congratulating  himself 
stupidly  because,  having  eaten  nothing  since  break- 
fast, the  liquor  was  the  more  sure  to  take  effect  and 
drive  out  his  miseries.  He  knew  that  when  he  turned 
away  he  had  reeled  slightly  in  his  walk;  he  knew  that 
he  had  fumbled  and  dropped  his  money  when  he  paid 
his  fare  in  the  horse-car ;  he  knew  that  it  was  because 
he  had  seen  double  that  his  latch-key  would  not  work, 
and  that  the  hall  light  had  done  queer  things  when 
at  last  the  door  was  opened  by  the  housemaid.  He 
knew, — a  dozen  times  he  pulled  himself  up  short  at 
that  point  in  his  ghastly  reminiscence.  And  yet  it 
was  the  final  facing  of  it  that  roused  his  will  and 
brought  him  morally  to  his  feet. 


The  Runaway  309 

Yes,  he  had  disgraced  himself  before  Winny,  and 
she  had  perceived  the  enormity  of  it.  There  had 
been  no  bewilderment,  no  agitation  in  her  voice. 
Nothing  but  cold  disgust  had  been  audible  in  word 
and  tone.  "He's  drunk!"  she  had  declared;  and 
then  she  was  gone,  and  only  Katherine  remained, 
excusing,  consoling,  sustaining. 

He  did  not  dwell  much  upon  the  thought  of  Kath- 
erine; she  was  a  lifelong  habit,  —  he  took  her  for 
granted.  But  Winny?  She  was  gone — gone  forever. 
He  should  never  see  her  again.  That  pain,  at  least, 
that  humiliation,  he  should  be  spared. 

Nor  did  Archie  err  in  his  perception  of  the  truth. 
Winny  was  lost  to  him  as  utterly  as  his  mother  had 
been  lost  to  Charles  Day;  and,  had  he  but  known  it, 
he  was  preparing  to  bear  his  loss  in  the  same  spirit 
which  had  been  his  father's.  Evasion  of  pain,  dis- 
traction from  sorrow, — that  was  the  instinct  alike  of 
father  and  son.  He  found  a  subtle  relief  at  the  very 
outset,  in  this  new  aspect  of  affairs,  tragic  as  it  really 
was.  There  should  be  no  more  begging  an  alms,  no 
more  whetting  of  the  hunger  of  the  heart  in  an  inces- 
sant supplication,  incessantly  denied. 

Before  he  knew  it,  he  was  up  and  dressed.  A  cold 
plunge-bath  had  braced  his  nerves,  the  brilliant  Oc- 
tober morning  had  stimulated  his  courage.  He  was 
standing  at  his  mirror,  tying  his  necktie,  when  Kath- 
erine rapped  softly  at  the  door. 

"All  right,  Kitkat,"  he  called.  "I  '11  be  down  to 
breakfast." 

As  his  eye  returned  to  the  mirror,  he  remembered 
that  Winny  had  approved  that  particular  tie,  and 
the  recollection  was  like  a  sword  thrust  at  his  heart; 
but  he  would  not  suffer,  he  would  not.  He  tore  off 


3io  Katharine  Day 

the  tie,  and  flinging  it  far  back  in  the  drawer,  he  seized 
another.  But  that  was  one  she  had  not  liked, — for 
Winny  could  be  very  critical  in  such  essentials. 
Somehow  this  seemed  to  hurt  more  than  the  other. 
Had  it  been  all  a  matter  of  ties, — of  rings, — of 
flowers?  Had  it  been  just  things?  A  desolating  sense 
took  him  of  the  hollowness  of  what  he  had  possessed; 
it  was  worse  than  the  sense  of  loss. 

To  reassure  himself,  Archie  let  his  glance  fall  upon 
a  photograph  in  a  little  rhinestone  frame  that  always 
stood  upon  his  bureau.  It  had  been  Winny's  birth- 
day gift  to  him.  She  had  judged  rightly  that  he 
could  value  nothing  more;  had  she  judged  as  rightly 
in  choosing  to  surround  it  with  those  glittering,  de- 
ceptive stones?  This  was  not  Archie's  reflection; 
he  was  too  loyal  for  that.  He  gave  no  thought  to 
the  frame,  but  only  to  the  face  within. 

What  a  face  it  was!  The  exquisite,  rounding  out- 
lines, the  ineffable  tenderness  of  the  modelling,  the 
delicate  challenge  of  the  lips!  What  poetry  there 
was  in  that  brow,  in  the  waving  shadow  of  the  hair, 
the  perfect  line  of  the  eyebrows!  And  how  could 
such  innocent,  child-like  eyes  be  anything  but  true? 
Yes,  Winny  was  all  he  had  loved  in  her, — of  that  he 
was  sure.  There  should  be  no  detraction  of  the  past, 
only  a  decent  burial.  And  against  the  climbing  pas- 
sion of  the  blood,  with  its  pain,  its  menacing  agony, 
Archie  set  nothing  but  that  fundamental  instinct 
which  amounted  to  a  revolt  of  his  nature  against 
suffering. 

With  a  firmness  of  purpose  that  he  had  rarely  ex- 
hibited, he  gathered  together  the  several  photographs 
of  Winny  that  adorned  his  room;  he  added  to  them 
the  little  one  in  a  leathern  case,  that  he  always  carried 


The  Runaway  311 

in  his  pocket,  and  he  laid  them  all  in  an  old-fashioned 
portable  writing-desk  that  had  been  his  father's. 
This  he  carefully  locked,  and,  carrying  the  key  in  his 
hand,  he  went  down-stairs.  He  found  the  housemaid 
below,  busy  with  her  dusting,  for  it  was  early  yet. 

"That  's  a  stray  key  I  picked  up,"  he  remarked, 
handing  it  to  her.  "You  had  better  put  it  some- 
where,"— and  the  faithful  Jane  took  the  key  without 
a  word.  It  was  she  who  had  opened  the  door  for  him 
the  night  before,  and  she  was  deeply  dejected;  for 
she  was  an  old  servant,  and  she  had  loved  Master 
Archie  all  his  life. 

The  door  at  the  east  end  of  the  hall  was  open,  and 
Katherine  was  out  on  the  veranda.  As  he  came 
toward  her  she  saw  that  his  face  was  haggard,  but 
she  saw,  too,  a  something  else  there, — a  look  almost 
of  determination, — and  the  unusual  virility  of  it  reas- 
sured while  it  perplexed  her. 

"What  a  glorious  morning  it  is,"  she  said;  and 
then,  sensible  of  the  irrelevancy  of  such  a  remark: 
"What  do  you  say  to  making  Roland  a  visit?"  She 
could  hear  old  Peter  tramping  about  at  his  morning 
work  in  the  stable,  and  she  fancied  that  Archie 
would  prefer  not  to  be  alone  with  her  just  now.  But, 
no ;  Archie  had  something  to  say  and  he  was  anxious 
to  get  it  over. 

"  I  want  to  speak  to  you,"  he  said,  with  an  abrupt- 
ness quite  foreign  to  his  usual  easy  address.  "I  'm 
off  to  the  Adirondacks  for  two  or  three  weeks'  shoot- 
ing. One  of  my  old  pals  has  a  camp  up  there ;  he  has 
been  after  me  to  come  up.  Now,  of  course,  there  's 
nothing  to  prevent.  That  's  what  they  call  com- 
pensation, you  know!" — and  he  smiled,  a  little  too 
brilliantly  for  Katharine's  satisfaction. 


312  Katharine  Day 

She  was  silent  for  a  moment,  examining  a  bunch  of 
berries  on  the  crimson  woodbine.  The  maple,  in  the 
circular  grass-plot  around  which  the  driveway  curved, 
was  flaming  scarlet.  How  splendid  the  year  was  in 
decay, — a  little  over-brilliant,  perhaps,  like  Archie's 
smile.  But  she  threw  off  the  uncomfortable  impression. 

"I  should  think  that  might  be  a  good  plan,  dear," 
she  replied.  "We  shall  know  better  how  to  manage 
when  we  've  had  a  little  time  to  think  things  over. 
Shall  you —  "  she  hesitated,  painfully;  she  hated  to 
admonish  him  at  such  a  moment, — but — "shall  you 
not  tell  grandmother  before  you  go?" 

His  face  clouded. 

"No,  I  '11  be  hanged  if  I  '11  undertake  that  chore. 
I  say,  Katherine," — and  for  the  moment  his  old 
wheedling  tone  came  back  to  him, — "I  say!  should 
you  mind  breaking  it  to  her? — everything,  I  mean, — 
the  business  bother,  and,  and — Winny?" 

"What  shall  I  tell  her,  Archie?" 

"Tell  her  I — that  I  was  n't  cut  out  for  a  money- 
changer— horrid  cads  they  're  apt  to  be!  The  Bible 
goes  for  them  somewhere,  I  remember.  You  might 
remind  her  of  that." 

"And  about  Winny?" 

"Oh; — just  say  that  's  off." 

"I  think  she  might  misunderstand,  if  I  did  n't  ex- 
plain; she  might  think  it  was  you, — that  you  were 
reconciled  to — to  the  break." 

"Well,  and  so  I  am!" — and  pulling  off  a  bunch  of 
the  berries,  he  began  snapping  them  at  the  old  cat, 
sunning  herself  on  the  steps.  He  was  a  good  shot, 
but  they  struck  harmlessly  against  her  thick  fur. 
"  She  does  n't  know  she  'shit,"  he  chuckled.  "That's 
the  kind !  That  's  the  way  to  go  through  life ! ' ' 


The  Runaway  313 

"You  don't  mean  that,"  said  Katherine,  slowly, — 
"you  don't  mean  that  about  Winny." 

Archie  straightened  himself,  at  the  same  time  fling- 
ing the  whole  handful  of  berries  at  the  cat,  who  slowly 
got  up,  and,  first  humping  her  back  portentously, 
began  stretching  herself  to  quite  indefinite  length. 

"Well  then, — I  '11  tell  you  what  I  do  mean,  and 
then  we  '11  make  an  end  of  the  subject.  I  've  known 
all  along  it  was  no  good, — Winny  's  not  on  my  side. 
She  's  in  the  right  of  it,  I  've  no  doubt; — if  there  had 
been  any  doubt,  last  night  would  have  settled  it." 
A  deep  flush  spread  up  his  cheek  and  forehead,  and 
his  mouth  twitched  a  bit.  Katherine  did  not  dare  to 
speak  or  move ;  it  was  not  sympathy  he  wanted  now. 

"Fact  is,  Katherine,"  he  went  on  with  the  same 
unnatural  bluntness,  "fact  is,  if  I  'm  not  enough  of  a 
man  to  behave  myself,  I  'm  enough  of  a  gentleman 
to  know  it,  and — Winny  's  quit  of  me.  You  may  tell 
her  so." 

"But,  Archie — "  Katherine  could  not  let  it  go  at 
that, — Katherine,  to  whose  believing  love  was  eternal, 
— Katherine,  who  had  held  the  weeping  Winny  in  her 
arms,  who  was  possessed  of  an  unshakable  faith  that 
Winny  loved  him  still,  and  that  all  would  yet  be  well. 
"But  Archie,"  she  cried,  taking  a  step  toward  him, 
eager  to  prove  him  in  the  wrong. 

"  Besides,"  he  added,  in  a  more  natural  tone;  "  I  'm 
sick  of  grovelling." 

She  stayed  her  protest ;  there  spoke  the  Archie  that 
she  knew.  The  feeling  that  prompted  those  words 
might  be  transitory ;  it  was  as  convincingly  character- 
istic as  the  sudden  self-defensive  drop  of  dismissal 
with  which  he  added  :  "And  now,  let  's  go  and  look 
after  Roland!" 


314  Katharine  Day 

They  walked  along  the  driveway,  side  by  side,  as 
they  had  done  so  many  hundred  times,  and,  as  they 
approached  the  stable  door,  he  threw  her  an  affection- 
ate look,  remarking,  as  he  had  done  so  many  hundred 
times  before,  but  with  just  a  thought  more  of  the 
accustomed  emphasis:  "All  the  same,  Katherine; 
you  're  a  brick !  Of  course  you  know  that ! ' ' 

And  Katherine?  In  spite  of  everything,  her  heart 
responded  to  the  word  of  praise  and  grew  a  trifle  lighter. 
So  that  Roland,  who  was  sensitive  to  people's  moods, 
found  nothing  amiss  in  the  extra  handful  of  oats  she 
had  purloined  from  the  crib  in  passing. 

As  for  Grandmother  Day,  she  bore  the  shock  better 
than  could  have  been  anticipated.  Archie  had  always 
been  the  favorite  grandson,  and  none  the  less  perhaps 
because  of  the  old  lady's  very  clear  understanding 
of  his  character.  She  was  a  woman  of  shrewd  percep- 
tions, and  much  practical  good  sense,  and  she  had  been 
quite  well  aware  of  the  disadvantage  which  an  inde- 
pendent fortune  must  be  to  a  boy  of  Archie's  tempera- 
ment. Nor  had  she  wholly  approved  his  business 
venture,  although  she  had  found  no  sufficient  reason 
for  opposing  it.  Indeed,  her  confidence  in  Tom's 
level-headedness  had  counted  for  much  in  her 
acquiescence. 

She  listened,  quietly,  to  the  sad  little  story  of  error 
and  defeat,  of  wrecked  ambition  and  forfeited  happi- 
ness,— her  needle  slackening  a  bit  at  the  critical  mo- 
ments in  the  narrative,  her  countenance,  the  while, 
handsome  and  self-possessed  as  her  own  portrait  of 
thirty  years  ago  which  hung  above  the  mantelpiece. 
They  were  in  the  pleasant  family  sitting-room;  the 
sun,  streaming  in  at  the  west  windows,  fell  athwart  the 
homely  interior,  throwing  into  high  relief  the  keen, 


The  Runaway  315 

vigorous  features  of  the  elder  woman,  but  leaving  in 
shadow  the  subtly  kindred  countenance  of  the  grand- 
daughter. Katherine's  face,  in  the  shadow  there,  was 
ardent  and  deprecating  by  turns,  but  animated  ever 
with  a  steady  loyalty;  while  on  the  grandmother's 
calm  and  unemotional  features  the  strong  light 
revealed  only  a  reassuring  force  and  philosophy. 
Truly,  a  man  possessed  of  such  a  pair  of  allies  might 
yet  retrieve  his  shattered  fortunes ! 

Mrs.  Day  had  been  thinking  rapidly  as  she  listened 
to  her  granddaughter's  pleading,  extenuating  voice. 
She  had  not  missed  a  point  in  the  exposition,  and  yet 
she  had  found  leisure  for  many  a  side  reflection,  and  it 
was  one  of  these  to  which  she  gave  utterance  as  Kath- 
erine  finished  her  story. 

"Archie  asked  me  to  tell  you  all  this,"  she  said,  "  be- 
cause he  so  hated  to  pain  you ! ' ' 

Upon  which,  Grandmother  Day,  with  a  quick  glance 
at  the  young  face,  flushed  and  quivering  with  emotion, 
only  said :  "  How  like  his  father  to  run  away ! "  Then, 
as  Katherine  made  a  protesting  movement, — "When 
your  mother  died  your  father  went  to  Europe.  They 
do  that — the  Days.  At  least,  some  of  them,"  she 
added,  with  another  glance  at  her  granddaughter. 

"You  believe  so  much  in  heredity?" 

"  So  much  ?  I  believe  it 's  everything.  Only  it  is  so 
complicated  that  it 's  not  always  easy  to  give  chapter 
and  verse  for  it." 

"One  would  think  heredity  would  have  made 
Archie  conservative ;  the  Days  have  never  gone  about 
speculating." 

"There  's  where  the  complication  comes  in.  Your 
grandfather  Stafford  lost  every  penny  he  had!" 

Mrs.  Day  seemed  inclined,  that  afternoon,  to  the 


316  Katherine  Day 

discussion  rather  of  general  principles  than  of  more 
immediate  perplexities.  Little  as  she  said,  however, 
Katherine  was  able  to  gather  much  courage  from  her 
attitude  and  tone.  And  yet,  accurate  though  the 
girl's  perception  was  in  the  main,  she  could  never  have 
guessed  what  had  really  been  to  her  grandmother  the 
ameliorating  consideration  in  the  case. 

The  truth  was,  that  Mrs.  Day's  satisfaction  in  the 
broken  engagement  went  far  toward  reconciling  her  to 
the  other  disastrous  features  of  the  affair.  It  was  not 
that  she  had  any  strong  personal  prejudice  against 
Winny;  on  the  contrary,  she  was  inclined  to  set  her 
down  as  a  bright  and  pretty  girl  whom  a  young  man 
might  be  excused  for  falling  in  love  with.  But  the 
Gerald  connection  was  one  which  her  soul  abhorred. 
Horace  Gerald  himself  she  disliked  and  distrusted ;  and, 
if  it  must  be  granted  that  his  wife  was  personally  unob- 
jectionable, she  came  of  an  inferior  stock.  Grand- 
mother Day's  faith  in  heredity  was  too  strong  for  any 
indifference  to  considerations  of  race ;  and  she  felt  that 
the  family  had  done  well  to  shake  off  such  an  alliance, 
even  at  the  cost  of  a  fortune.  She  did  not  under- 
stand that  Archie  had  committed  any  enormity,  in  his 
business  relations.  Indeed,  his  own  very  plausible 
account  of  the  matter  was  not  likely  to  have  suffered 
through  the  medium  of  his  sister's  presentment  of  it. 
That  he  had  made  a  shocking  fool  of  himself  was  clear 
enough,  and  Tom  was  doubtless  justified  in  washing 
his  hands  of  him.  But  after  all  it  was  his  own  money 
that  the  boy  had  tampered  with;  and  in  so  far  as  his 
grandmother  could  judge  the  transgression  appeared 
to  be  a  venial  one. 

As  to  his  disappointment, — he  could  be  trusted  to 
get  the  better  of  that.  He  would  run  away ;  he  had 


The  Runaway  317 

in  fact  already  run  away.  He  might,  to  be  sure,  never 
marry — his  father  had  declined  a  second  venture — and 
she  should  be  sorry  for  that,  for  she  should  like  to  have 
the  name  continued ;  but  not  with  the  Gerald  blood. 

When  Winny  was  announced,  late  in  the  afternoon, 
Mrs.  Day  found  in  the  visit  a  not  unwelcome  confirma- 
tion of  her  theories.  . 

"Hardly  in  good  taste,"  she  remarked  to  her 
daughter  Fanny,  who  had  been  admitted  to  the  family 
confidence. 

"Ah,  but  think  how  she  must  yearn  for  tidings  of 
him,"  Mrs.  Bliss  murmured. 

"  I  don't  think  Miss  Winny  is  of  the  yearning  kind," 
was  the  curt  reply.  Certain  words  were  inherently  ex- 
asperating to  Grandmother  Day;  yearn  was  one  of 
them. 

Katherine  found  Winny  in  the  parlor.  She  was 
even  more  carefully  and  becomingly  dressed  than 
usual,  and  her  manner  was  unwontedly  affectionate. 

"Dear  Katherine,"  she  cried,  as  they  sat  down  to- 
gether on  the  sofa,  "  I  do  so  feel  for  you!  I  almost  for- 
get my  own  unhappiness  when  I  think  what  this  must 
be  to  you! " 

"You  mean  last  night,  Winny?" — and  Katherine 
raised  her  head  pretty  proudly.  "That  was  the 
merest  accident  such  as  might  happen  to  any  one  in 
great  mental  trouble.  Such  a  thing  never  happened 
to  Archie  before,  and  it  never  will  again." 

Winny  sighed, — a  little,  fluttering  sigh. 

"How  fortunate  you  are,  Katherine,"  she  said, 
"  that  you  can  afford  to  excuse  it.  Of  course  you  are 
bound  to,  with  your  own  brother.  But  with  me  it  is 
so  different;  it  changes  everything.  I — why,  I  can't 
afford  to  excuse  it." 


318  Katherine  Day 

Katherine  perfectly  understood  the  complete  repu- 
diation implied,  and  her  spirit  rose. 

"There  will  be  no  question  of  your  excusing  it,"  she 
said,  withdrawing  her  hand  from  Winny's  delicately 
gloved  fingers.  "Archie  will  never  molest  you  again. 
He  went  away  this  morning,  and  he  told  me  to  say  that 
he  perfectly  understood  that  everything  was  at  an  end 
between  you.  He  said — '  Tell  her  she  's  quit  of  me '." 

Winny's  face  changed,  and  quick  tears  came  to  her 
eyes;  yet  their  source  was  mixed.  She  was  a  simple 
nature,  excepting  where  her  egotism  was  touched ;  but 
in  that  department  of  her  mental  processes  were  many 
curious  byways  and  involutions.  And  so  the  feeling 
that  blanched  her  cheek  was  a  mixture  of  disappointed 
affection,  wounded  vanity,  shrinking  from  the  inevi- 
table. The  child  had  loved  Archie  with  all  there  was 
in  her  to  love  with.  He  suited  her;  he  had  touched 
whatever  there  was  of  heart  in  her,  and  that  fragment, 
inadequate  as  it  was  to  the  greater  demands  of  life, 
was  capable  of  being  hurt.  The  hurt  was  not  so 
severe  as  to  drive  her  to  what  she  would  have  con- 
sidered an  infinitely  greater  misfortune; — she  no 
longer  had  any  intention  of  marrying  him,  but  his 
presence,  his  supplications,  still  ministered  acceptably 
to  her,  and  in  telling  her  lover's  sister  that  she  could 
not  excuse  his  offence,  she  was  perhaps  not  quite  sin- 
cere. 

"You  are  both  so  cruel,"  she  said,  with  a  very 
touching  air  of  injured  sensibility. 

"Indeed,  Winny,  we  don't  mean  to  be  cruel," 
Katherine  cried,  softening  at  once.  "Archie  only 
wants  to  do  the  kindest,  the  most  honorable  thing; 
and  you  yourself  say  everything  is  changed." 

"  But  I  wanted  him  to  care! " 


The  Runaway  319 

"Care!"  Katherine  repeated,  in  quick  protest. 
"Care!" 

A  firm  step  on  the  threshold  gave  her  pause. 

It  was  Tom.  He  stood  an  instant,  hesitating,  not 
quite  himself,  and  the  modesty  of  the  attitude  was 
singularly  becoming  to  him.  Then  he  crossed  the 
room  and  confronted  the  two  girls — for  it  was  nothing 
short  of  that.  The  certainty  that  he  had  hurt  them 
both,  but  the  equal  certainty  that  he  had  been  in  the 
right  of  it,  called  a  look,  half  defiant,  half  abashed,  into 
his  sturdy,  open  face,  that  again  was  becoming. 

"Jane  told  me  to  come  in  here,"  he  said;  for  Kath- 
erine had  not  spoken. 

She  rose  to  her  feet, — hard,  implacable,  cold  as  ice. 
Tom  could  not  guess  that  if  she  buckled  on  her 
armor  it  was  quite  as  much  against  herself  as  against 
him.  They  had  not  met  since  that  bitter  evening 
when  she  had  suffered  harsh  denial  at  his  hands.  At 
the  sight  of  his  figure  in  the  doorway  there,  her  pulse 
had  bounded  in  an  unreasoning  welcome.  But  in- 
stantly the  reaction,  the  sudden  curbing  of  the 
blood  had  thrown  her  into  an  attitude  of  crude 
antagonism. 

Rising  slowly  to  her  feet:  "  I  will  tell  grandmother 
that  you  are  here,"  she  said.  Her  words  bit  like 
an  acid  into  her  own  consciousness;  the  tone  of 
them  struck  Tom  like  a  blow.  His  face  went 
crimson. 

She  had  not  offered  him  her  hand ;  she  had  scarcely 
looked  at  him,  as  she  swept  past  him  out  of  the  room. 
She  had  forgotten  Winny;  he,  too,  had  forgotten  her. 
He  stood  there,  staggered  with  the  instant's  revela- 
tion. He  only  knew  that  Katherine  hated  him,  and 
with  a  hatred  that  had  outlived  the  heat  of  anger,  and 


320  Katharine  Day 

he  was  cut  to  the  heart, — yes,  to  the  heart, — that 
impregnable  fastness  of  his. 

"  How  could  Katherine  be  so  rude ! " — the  voice  was 
caressing  in  its  sweetness. 

Tom  pulled  himself  up. 

"  Oh !  Miss  Gerald !  "  he  said,  as  his  eyes  came  down 
to  her  level. 

She  had  not  left  her  seat ;  the  upturned  face  was  still 
tear-stained,  still  quivering  with  an  emotion,  past, 
perhaps,  but  worth  preserving  the  traces  of.  How 
exquisite  the  face  was!  Not  so  much  wonder  that 
Archie  had  made  a  fool  of  himself!  But — tears  might 
be  never  so  becoming  to  a  woman, — a  man  must  not 
be  caught  off  his  guard. 

"It  's  not  the  first  tiff  Katherine  and  I  have  had," 
he  laughed,  while  a  pang  took  him  at  the  thought  that 
it  would  perhaps  be  the  last. 

He  rather  expected  the  girl  to  go.  It  seemed  so 
incongruous  that  they  should  stay  on  there  together — 
he  and  Winny  Gerald!  How  she  must  hate  him, 
though, — Jove !  she  had  a  queer  way  of  showing  it ! 

And  Winny,  looking  up  into  the  strong,  defiant  face, 
felt  the  sudden  need  of  asserting  herself  and  her  own 
powers.  If  Katherine  could  defy  and  irritate  this 
redoubtable  antagonist,  why  should  not  she  be  the  one 
to  placate  him  ?  Winny  dearly  loved  the  pleasing  art 
of  conquest,  and  it  was  long  since  she  had  had  an  op- 
portunity of  exercising  it  beyond  the  limits  of  her 
special  sovereignty.  She  suddenly  felt  what  had  been 
the  monotony  of  a  long  courtship. 

"Are  n't  you  going  to  sit  down?"  she  asked,  with  a 
pretty  hesitancy.  "We  are  all  in  such  dreadful 
trouble  that  I  think  we  are  losing  our  manners." 

Mechanically  he  took  a  chair. 


The  Runaway  321 

"You  are  very  good  to  be  so  friendly,"  he  declared. 
"You  must  feel  that  I  have  done  you  a  frightful 
injury." 

"I  am  sure  you  only  did  what  was  right,"  she  an- 
swered, but  with  the  saddest  little  smile.  The  contrast 
to  Katherine's  intolerance  and  vindictiveness  could 
not  have  been  more  marked. 

"  Upon  my  word,"  cried  Tom,  "  I  do  feel  badly  about 
it !  It  was  a  miserable  business  all  round." 

"Yes;  but  wasn't  it  better  to  be  outspoken  and 
decided  ?  A  man  must  be  like  that  to  be  really  respect- 
ed. And — I  am  sure  it  is  kinder  in  the  end." 

"  Now  do  you  know?  th'at's  exactly  the  way  I  looked 
at  it!'  But  the  others — " 

"You  mean  Katherine  and  Archie?  But  do  you 
think  they  are  quite — reasonable — where  their  own 
feelings  are  concerned?" 

Tom  had  not  looked  at  it  in  that  light ;  but  it  seemed 
certainly  very  plausible.  Yes ;  surely  it  was  Katherine's 
feeling,  not  her  reason,  that  had  made  her  treat  him  so. 
Curious,  that  a  soft,  girlish  creature  like  this  should  see 
so  much  clearer  than  Katherine,  who  sometimes  seemed 
so  deceptively  broad-minded.  But  there  it  was!  She 
was  not  reasonable  where  her  feelings  were  concerned ! 

There  was  a  movement  overhead  in  Mrs.  Day's 
chamber,  and  Winny  stood  up  at  once. 

"Good-by,"  she  murmured,  giving  him  her  hand. 
Strange  that  he  should  have  thought  at  that  moment 
of  Katherine's  way  of  doing  it;  surely  nothing  could 
be  more  gracious  than  this ! 

He  took  the  little  hand,  saying:  "I  can't  thank 
you  enough,  Miss  Gerald,  for  your  kindness.  It 
means  a  lot  to  me  just  now."  He  was  walking  with 
her  to  the  door. 


322  Katherine  Day 

"  I  am  so  glad  to  have  met  you  here,"  she  answered, 
very  prettily.  "  I  was  longing  to  tell  you  that  I  under- 
stood." 

She  paused  an  instant  on  the  threshold,  listening; 
Mrs.  Day's  door  had  not  yet  opened. 

"  I  am  trying  to  get  courage  to  ask  a  favor  of  you," 
she  said,  with  the  most  enchanting  timidity  of  voice 
and  gesture;  the  appeal  of  the  supplicating  eyes  as 
they  met  his  was  subtly,  penetratingly  flattering. 

"Ask  anything  you  will,"  he  exclaimed.  "  I  should 
be  only  too  glad  to  serve  you." 

"Would  you — I  know  how  busy  you  are,  but  — 
would  you  come  to  see  me  some  day?  I  do  so  long  to 
understand  more  about  this  sad  business.  I  should 
know  so  much  better  how  to  act!" 

Tom  was  startled,  and  —  being  a  mere  man  —  de- 
luded. Was  not  this  an  opening?  Could  he  not  per- 
haps]say  a  good  word  for  Archie  ?  There  was  a  lot  to  be 
said  for  him ;  he  was  longing  already  to  make  restitu- 
tion, and  as  he  looked  down  into  the  pretty  face,  he 
was  seized  with  a  new  sympathy  for  his  unlucky 
partner.  Indeed,  it  had  been  hard  lines  to  lose  a  girl 
like  that!  He  had  had  no  idea  she  was  so  lovely. 
And  what  a  heart  she  had,  and  what  an  understanding ! 
If  only  he  might  do  something  to  straighten  this  thing 
out, — then  Katherine  would  see  how  unjust  she  had 
been.  He  could  almost  hear  her  voice  asking  him  to 
forgive  her. 

It  was  well  for  Winny's  vanity  that  she  did  not 
rightly  interpret  the  warmth  with  which  Tom  cried : 
"Indeed  I  will  come,  with  the  greatest  pleasure;  the 
sooner  the  better! " 

As  the  door  closed  behind  the  softly  rustling  skirts, 
Tom  heard  his  grandmother's  step  in  the  upper  hall, 


The  Runaway  323 

and,  turning,  he  watched  her  coming  down  the  stairs — 
alone.  How  many  times  he  had  seen  Katherine  com- 
ing down  those  stairs — alone — to  meet  him  ;  and  how 
pleasant,  how  delightfully,  how  inexplicably  pleasant 
it  had  been! 


CHAPTER  XV 

AT    CROSS-PURPOSES 

"Love,  hope,  fear,  faith — these  make  humanity; 
These  are  its  sign,  and  note,  and  character." 

AS  Tom  reflected  upon  his  unlooked-for  interview 
with  Winny ,  he  discovered  no  just  grounds  for  re- 
gretting the  promise  he  had  made  her,  nor  was  any  flaw 
in  her  reasoning  apparent  to  him.  Indeed,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  she,  in  her  own  little,  narrow  way,  had 
been  right,  as  little,  narrow  minds  have  the  vexatious 
knack  of  being  on  occasion.  It  was  quite  true  that 
Katherine  's  reason  had  been,  to  a  degree,  overcome  by 
her  feelings;  though  how  intimately,  how  intensely 
her  own  those  feelings  had  been,  Winny  little  guessed. 
Katherine  would,  to  be  sure,  in  any  case,  have  deeply 
resented  Tom's  peremptory  dealing  with  Archie;  the 
old,  friendly  relation  must  have  suffered  a  check.  Yet, 
ardent  as  her  championship  might  be,  she  was  really 
too  imaginative  to  make  a  good  partisan.  When  the 
first  heat  of  contest  was  over,  she  could  usually  put 
herself  into  her  opponent's  place,  and  take  his  point  of 
view.  And  her  comprehension  of  Tom's  side  of  the 
question,  her  sympathetic  understanding  of  the  injury 
he  had  sustained,  of  his  belief  that  decisive  action  was 
necessary  if  the  ambition  of  his  life  were  not  to  be 


At  Cross-Purposes  325 

seriously  jeopardized,  would  in  itself  greatly  have 
modified  her  resentment. 

But  Katherine  was  suffering  under  the  sting  of  a 
personal  rejection  which  could  not  but  be  intolerable 
to  a  high-spirited  girl,  and  all  contact  with  the  man 
who  had  beguiled  her  heart,  and  then,  unconsciously 
to  be  sure,  thrown  it  back  upon  her  hands,  terrified 
and  afflicted  her.  She  did  not  run  away,  as  Archie 
had  done ;  she  simply  steeled  herself  to  repel  and  en- 
dure. It  was  all  wrong,  all  overwrought,  this  sense  of 
rejection  and  spurning.  Poor  Tom  never  meant  it  so; 
he  had  not  in  the  least  understood  the  situation. 
With  all  his  inherent  force  of  character,  the  young 
stock-broker  was  still,  in  his  spiritual  development, 
something  of  a  hobbledehoy ;  he  had  not  got  his  growth 
yet.  And  although  he  was  already  blindly  reaching 
out  to  Katherine  with  an  instinctive  craving  for  some- 
thing he  was  stubbornly  bent  upon  postponing,  it 
would  never  have  entered  his  mind  to  conceive  that 
she,  more  perceptive  and  more  spontaneous,  had 
already  responded  to  the  unspoken  appeal  of  his 
nature.  Nor  did  Katherine  suppose  that  he  under- 
stood. She  only  feared  that  he  might ;  and  her  heart, 
like  a  coward  householder,  went  about  erecting  need- 
less and  inconvenient  barriers  against  an  imagined 
danger. 

She  was  unfortunately  driven  in  upon  herself  at  this 
juncture,  for  she  found  herself  cut  off  from  active  par- 
ticipation in  the  readjustment  of  her  brother's  affairs. 
Grandmother  Day  had  quietly  assumed  the  reins. 
She  had  convinced  herself  that  Tom  needed  no  pecu- 
niary aid,  that,  in  fact,  his  affairs  had  already  so  well 
adjusted  themselves  that  no  better  disposition  could 
be  made  of  the  uninvolved  balance  of  Archie's  capital, 


326  Katherine  Day 

than  to  leave  it  in  the  hands  of  his  former  partner. 
Indeed,  Tom's  business  ability  had  never  been  so 
clearly  demonstrated  as  in  this  crisis,  although  the 
manner  in  which  his  credit  had  stood  the  sharp, 
though  transient,  strain  put  upon  it,  furnished 
gratifying  evidence  of  the  reputation  he  already 
enjoyed.  Mrs.  Day,  thus  relieved  from  any  drain 
upon  her  principal,  was  the  better  able  to  assume  that 
responsibility  for  Archie's  immediate  maintenance 
which  his  sister  so  eagerly  desired  to  bear,  and  it  was 
quickly  made  clear  to  Katherine  that  her  grandmother 
had  no  intention  of  abdicating  either  the  burdens  or 
the  honors  accruing  to  her  position  as  head  of  the 
family. 

Archie,  meanwhile,  was  still  away,  confining  his 
communications  to  occasional  shipments  of  game,  very 
much  as  his  father  used  to  do.  How  poignantly,  yet 
how  caressingly,  the  past  came  back  to  Katherine,  as 
she  busied  herself  with  the  unpacking  of  those  boxes 
of  game !  How  easy  life  had  been  in  the  good  old  days, 
when  Cousin  Elmira  tyrannized  over  her,  when  choco- 
late creams  and  paper-dolls  were  so  dearly  desired,  and 
magenta  frocks  so  deeply  detested! 

Yes,  Katherine  had  far  too  much  time  for  brooding; 
she  was  in  danger  of  becoming  morbid,  and  she  knew 
it.  And  when  she  tried  to  rouse  herself  to  her  old 
interests,  life  seemed  drearily  flat  and  unprofitable. 
If  she  could  only  have  been  Archie's  providence  as  she 
so  longed  to  be,  there  would  have  been  purpose  and 
interest  in  the  future.  But  she  knew  that  the 
same  unimpeachable  authority  which  forbade  the  sac- 
rifice of  her  fortune,  would  restrict  her  actions  in  other 
ways  as  well. 

Mrs.  Day,  meanwhile,  was  clear  that  Archie  must 


At  Cross-Purposes  327 

not  stay  at  home  that  winter;  that  he  would  never 
amount  to  anything  in  Winny's  neighborhood. 

"He  has  got  to  keep  on  running  away,"  she  de- 
clared, as  she  sat,  one  afternoon,  deftly  winding  a 
skein  of  yarn  into  a  wonderful  egg-shaped  ball; 
"he  's  no  fighter." 

"But  Archie  is  brave  as  anybody!"  cried  Kath- 
erine,  who  was  dutifully  holding  the  yarn.  "Don't 
you  remember  how  he  stopped  that  runaway  horse 
in  the  winter,  at  the  risk  of  his  own  life?" 

"That  was  not  fighting;  it  was  simply  following  an 
impulse,  which  he  may  always  be  trusted  to  do.  As  I 
was  saying,  he  has  got  to  go  away  and  stay  away. ' '  It 
was  evident  that  Grandmother  Day  had  thought  the 
question  out  very  carefully,  for  she  added,  as  the  egg 
grew  in  perfect  symmetry  under  her  skillful  fingers: 
"  He  might  go  to  New  York  and  study  something, — 
architecture,  perhaps.  He  used  to  incline  that  way. 
Or, — we  can't  expect  him  to  be  particularly  ambitious 
just  now, — if  he  were  to  like  ranching  better,  for  the 
time  being,  why,  there's  that  nephew  of  your  mother's 
out  West,  somewhere." 

"I  wish  I  could  go  with  him,"  said  Katherine, 
rather  hesitatingly,  but  without  venturing  to  inter- 
rupt the  shuttle-like  action  of  her  hands. 

"To  study  architecture?  Or  to  raise  cattle?" 
Those  sharp  looks  of  Grandmother  Day's  were  a  very 
significant  part  of  conversation  with  her. 

"To  make  a  home  for  him.  Don't  you  think  Archie 
needs  a  home,  Grandmother?" 

"  No,  I  do  not.  He  has  had  one  this  last  year,  and 
much  good  it  has  done  him.  What  Archie  needs  is 
men.  There  have  been  too  many  women  abou.t; 
we've  been  coddling  him!"  As  if  Grandmother  Day 


328  Katherine  Day 

ever  coddled  anybody !  Yet  Katherine  knew  what  she 
meant ;  she  usually  understood  her  grandmother ;  for, 
unlike  as  they  were  in  temperament,  their  minds  were 
kindred. 

So  she  was  not  to  make  a  home  for  Archie, — not  yet, 
at  least.  He  did  not  need  her;  nobody  needed  her, 
she  thought,  as  the  last  of  the  yarn  slipped  through 
her  fingers.  Yet,  stay!  What  was  Jane  saying?  Mr. 
Stuyvesant  had  called  and  asked  for  Master  Archie. 
Would  Miss  Katherine  see  him  ?  The  announcement 
was  like  a  direct  refutation  of  her  despondent  fancy ; 
yet  there  was  little  consolation  in  it.  As  Katherine 
passed  down  the  stairs  to  receive  her  visitor  it  seemed 
to  her  as  if  everything  in  life  were  at  hopeless  cross- 
purposes. 

They  had  met  only  in  the  most  casual  way,  she  and 
Paul,  since  the  spring,  and,  to-day,  as  he  came  forward 
to  greet  her,  her  first  thought  was  that  he  was  looking 
well.  She  had  forgotten  that  he  was  so  tall,  and  the 
extreme  refinement  of  his  face  impressed  her  as  it  had 
never  done  before.  The  vivid,  ever-present  image 
of  Tom  was  throwing  into  strong  relief  the  manifold 
personal  advantages  of  her  old  lover. 

Their  talk  was  all  of  Archie.  Paul  had  but  just 
heard  that  the  two  men  had  dissolved  partnership; 
he  was  afraid  there  was  something  wrong,  that  some- 
how or  other  they  had  come  to  grief,  and  that  Archie 
had  got  the  worst  of  it. 

"I  knew  he  was  no  match  for  McLean,"  he  ex- 
claimed, when  Katherine  had  told  him  the  tale  as  she 
understood  it. 

"  But  there  was  no  question  of  his  being  a  match  for 
Tom,  you  know.  They  were  playing  on  the  same  side." 

"Technically,  yes!    But  somehow  I  never  could 


At  Cross-Purposes  329 

fancy  them  playing  together.  McLean  was  always 
such  a  heavy-weight,  and  Archie, — well,  he  was  meant 
for  different  things — better  things  it  seems  to  me. 
Archie  's  all  nerve  and  fire.  You  might  as  well  try  to 
hammer  with  a  Damascus  blade!" 

"  Did  you  ever  talk  it  over  with  him? " 

"  Yes;  I  told  him  he  was  n't  cut  out  for  business  and 
he  only  said  he  was  cut  out  for  Winny  Gerald  and  that 
nothing  else  mattered.  How  does  she  take  it,  by  the 
way?" 

Katherine  flushed  with  a  quick  shame  for  Winny. 

"Oh,  Winny?"  she  repeated.  "Her  father  has 
broken  it  off." 

"But  she  does  n't  submit,"  cried  Paul,  leaning  for- 
ward. 

"  I  am  afraid  she  does ;  she  thinks  he  knows  best.  I 
suppose  I  should  feel  just  so,  if  my  father  were  living, 
— as  if  he  must  be  right,  no  matter  what  he  did." 

Paul  was  silent  a  moment. 

"  Your  father  would  never  have  been  like  that,  I  am 
sure,"  he  declared,  quietly.  "There  could  never  have 
been  anything  sordid  about  him." 

"Poor  Winny!"  Katherine  sighed.  "I  wish  her 
father  were  different!  However,  Archie  has  stopped 
urging  it.  He  has  gone  shooting." 

"  Might  have  known  he  would,"  Paul  cried,  with  the 
affectionate  indulgence  which  Archie's  case  usually 
commanded.  "What  is  he  going  to  do  when  he  gets 
back?" 

"Grandmother  wants  him  to  go  away  again, — to 
New  York,  or  out  West,  or  somewhere." 

"She  's  right — that  is,  if  there  is  really  nothing  to 
hope  from  Miss  Gerald." 

"No,  I  am  afraid  that  is  over  and  done  with — for 


330  Katherine  Day 

the  present  at  least.     Poor  child;    she  is  very  un- 
happy." 

"Curious  that  you  should  pity  her!  I  should  have 
said  you  were  the  last  girl  in  the  world  to  understand 
such  a  thing!" 

Do  what  he  would,  Paul  could  not  keep  his  speech 
quite  clear  of  the  personal  note,  that  note  that  had 
dominated  him  for  years.  No,  Katherine  would  never 
have  failed  the  man  she  loved.  He  knew  her  well. 
Ah,  it  was  good  just  to  hear  her  voice  again!  He  had. 
been  half-starved  for  the  mere  sound  and  sight  of  her, 
and  here  she  was,  her  best  and  dearest  self.  And 
Katherine  felt  that  urgency  of  his  soul,  so  carefully 
held  in  check,  and  it  touched  her  as  it  had  never 
done  before. 

"I  suppose  I  understand  Winny  better  because  of 
her  being  my  oldest  and  nearest  friend,"  she  said,  with 
a  certain  compassionate  cadence  that  was  meant  more 
for  Paul  than  for  Winny,  had  he  but  guessed  it.  Un- 
able as  he  was  to  interpret  it  aright : 

"She  's  not  worthy  of  that!"  he  cried  impetuously. 

"Oh,  you  don't  know  her!"  and  now  her  thought 
was  all  of  Winny. 

He  longed  to  say :  "No,  it  is  you  I  know!" — but  he 
asked,  instead:  "And  Archie?  Does  he  think  her 
right?" 

"  He  told  me  that  he  thought  it  better  so, — now." 

"Then  of  course  he  must  go  away.  And" — with 
the  change  of  tone  which  marks  the  transference 
of  attention  to  practical  themes — "  I  've  been  wonder- 
ing, Katherine;  do  you  think  he  would  make  any- 
thing of  German  university  life?  I  am  considering 
that  for  next  year,  when  I  've  got  my  degree,  and  if 
Archie  would  come  along  too — •" 


At  Cross-Purposes  331 

"O  Paul!  how  wo'nderful  that  would  be! — To  have 
Archie  with  you,  and  working  hard — with  his  brains ! 
It  's  perfectly  true,  as  you  say," — she  went  on,  speak- 
ing rapidly, — for  as  her  spirits  rose  her  words  could 
scarcely  keep  pace  with  her  swift  thought,  "Archie 
was  never  meant  to  hammer  with ;  he  's  of  finer  metal 
than  that.  He  wants  sharpening  and  tempering.  Oh! 
if  you  could  only  persuade  him !  I  know  grandmother 
would  approve!" 

"If  he  were  to  take  a  literary  turn,  as  he  used  to 
think  of  doing,"  Paul  struck  in,  fired  to  a  sympathetic 
fervor,  "all  that  sort  of  thing  would  come  into  play 
first-rate." 

"And,  meanwhile,  this  winter,  he  really  might  like 
to  go  out  to  Cousin  Rob  on  his  ranch.  Rob  Staf- 
ford is  the  only  relative  we  have  on  our  mother's  side, 
and  we  have  always  liked  him  so  much.  He  writes  of 
big  game  out  there.  I  know  Archie  would  enjoy  it!" 

"I  could  sail  in  June,  and  we  could  knock  about 
somewhere  for  the  summer!" — How  exhilarating  it 
was  to  be  furthering  Katherine's  desires! — next  best 
to  accomplishing  his  own. 

"He  might  begin  writing  then,"  she  continued, 
eagerly.  "Or  at  the  ranch,  even.  There  must  be 
heaps  of  copy  on  a  ranch." 

"  Of  course,  if  he  should  take  to  writing,  everything 
would  work  in." 

If  he  should!  That  was  the  question.  That  was 
always  the  question  with  Archie.  No  one  ever 
doubted  his  aptitudes, — the  doubt  always  rested  on 
his  inclination;  that,  alas!  was  prone  to  vacillate. 
Yet,  now  ?  Now  that  a  new  necessity  confronted  him, 
might  it  not  be  as  powerful,  and  more  steadying,  than 
the  old  inspiration  that  had  so  suddenly  failed? 


332  Katherine  Day 

As  time  went  on,  Katherine 's  eager  confidence  in- 
creased; the  more  so,  as  Grandmother  Day  pro- 
nounced herself  ready  to  endorse  the  new  plan.  Archie 
was  coming  home  before  long,  but  Katherine  could  not 
wait  for  his  return  and  assent  before  telling  Winny  of 
the  new  possibilities.  Poor  Winny !  How  sad  she  must 
be,  and  with  what  grace  and  fortitude  she  concealed 
it !  There  were  no  more  tears,  no  more  appeals  for  sym- 
pathy. She  seemed  rather  to  avoid  Katherine;  but 
when  they  met  she  was  quite  her  old  self,  the  Winny  of 
the  days  before  disaster  touched  her,  the  Winny  of 
longer  ago  than  that,  of  the  time  before  the  engage- 
ment itself.  But  Katherine  must  break  through  the 
reserve  tacitly  agreed  upon ;  she  must  impart  the  word 
of  cheer  at  once.  Accordingly,  the  next  afternoon, 
which  was  Sunday ,  she  set  forth  on  her  errand. 

It  was  a  bleak  November  day,  sunless  and  chill. 
The  autumn  glory  was  dimmed.  The  half-stripped 
branches  of  the  trees  looked  dreary  in  the  meagre 
afternoon  light;  the  very  ground  had  lost  its  elas- 
ticity. Yet  Katherine,  as  she  trod  the  unresponsive 
earth,  while  the  dead  leaves  faintly  rustled  to  the 
swing  of  her  skirts,  was  conscious  of  a  lighter  spirit 
than  she  had  known  for  many  a  day. 

As  she  approached  the  Gerald  house,  she  heard  the 
closing  of  the  front  door,  and,  looking  up,  she  beheld  a 
figure  walking  rapidly  down  the  path.  What  was 
Tom  doing  at  the  Geralds'?  Tom,  who  never  in  his 
life  made  a  call, — excepting  on  the  family. 

They  met  just  outside  the  gate,  and  Tom? — yes,  as 
he  lifted  his  hat  and  passed  her  without  speaking,  she 
saw  that  he  was  disconcerted.  Reason  enough,  too, 
after  their  last  meeting.  Of  course  he  was  discon- 
certed; so  was  she. 


At  Cross-Purposes  333 

He  had  probably  been  talking  business  with  Mr. 
Gerald.  At  any  rate  his  .visit  did  not  concern  her. 
How  strange  it  was  for  them  to  meet  without  speaking. 
She  wondered, — would  they  never  speak  again?  She 
must  be  the  first,  of  course,  after  her  rudeness  the 
other  day ;  and  it  would  be  necessary, — for  they  must 
constantly  meet. — Only — never  in  the  old  way — never 
with  any  satisfaction !  She  supposed  she  would  have 
spoken  just  now  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  shock  of  the 
unexpected  encounter.  As  she  touched  the  bell  knob, 
— how  strange,  she  thought,  that  Tom  should  have 
been  there  before  her! — that  he  should  have  pulled 
that  bell,  that  the  door  should  have  opened  to  him! 

As  Katherine  entered  the  parlor  Winny  came  for- 
ward with  unusual  effusiveness.  She  was  so  particu- 
larly glad  to  see  Katherine !  It  was  ages  since  they  had 
met!  She  wanted  all  the  news,  and — had  they  had  a 
letter  from  poor  Archie?  She  had  been  desperately 
busy  herself  with  shopping  and  dressmaking.  Her 
mother  had  been  housed  with  a  cold,  so  she  had 
been  kept  running  about,  and  there  was  nothing  the 
children  did  not  seem  to  need  just  now;  shoes  and 
frocks  and  hats.  They  had  been  rather  neglected  this 
season,  everybody  had  been  so  busy  about  her,  Winny 
— with  a  little  conscious  droop  of  the  lids,  and  a  small, 
soft  sigh  that  spoke  of  delicate  reserves.  She  really 
had  not  supposed  she  could  be  so  domestic,  but  when 
one's  own  happiness  was  at  an  end  one  had  to  be 
interested  in  the  welfare  of  others.  It  was  all  there 
was  left.  "And  I  had  no  idea  I  should  take  to  it  so 
naturally ! ' ' 

Katherine  listened ,  bewildered .  What  did  it  mean  ? 
What  was  real  and  what  was  assumed,  in  all  this  eager 
chatter?  Was  Winny  talking  down  her  own  heart? 


334  Katherine  Day 

She  must  be.  Who  was  Katherine,  that  she  should  sit 
in  judgment  upon  the  manner  another  might  elect  of 
bearing  a  great  sorrow?  If  she,  herself,  turned 
harsh  and  obdurate,  why  should  not  Winny's  gentler 
nature  find  refuge  in  this  lightness,  this  apparent  in- 
difference ?  No  doubt  she,  like  Katherine,  was  carry- 
ing— though  in  so  jaunty  a  fashion  —  the  old  wound; 
no  doubt  her  heart  like  Katherine's  was  as  sad  as 
when  they  had  wept  so  naturally,  so  unrestrainedly, 
in  one  another's  arms.  Only,  they  were  no  longer 
children ;  they  must  bear  their  sorrows  as  best  they 
might,  and  have  a  brave  face  to  meet  the  world  with. 
Perhaps  it  was  as  well  that  they  should  practise  upon 
one  another. 

But  there  seemed  no  chance  of  saying  what  she  had 
come  to  say,  and  it  occurred  to  Katherine  that  it 
might  be  more  fitting  to  wait  until  Archie  had  pro- 
nounced upon  their  plan  for  him  before  communicat- 
ing it  to  others.  Others !  To  think  of  Winny  coming 
under  that  general  category !  Well,  life  was  a  great 
puzzle.  She  only  wished  she  knew  that  Tom  had 
not  been  calling  there.  And  why?  Why  should  she 
wish  such  a  thing?  —  If  only  Winny  would  speak! 
Yet  perhaps  she  did  not  even  know  he  had  been  there. 

Although  her  visit  had  been  a  short  one,  the  twi- 
light was  already  deepening  when  Katherine  rose  to 
go.  Under  cover  of  its  soft  shadow  she  bent  to 
kiss  Winny  good-by,  and  Winny  returned  the  caress 
with  much  affection.  She  was  truly  fond  of  Kather- 
ine, although  she  often  wished  she  were  different. 
It  would  be  awkward  to  have  a  secret  from  a  familiar 
friend  like  that;  she  had  often  found  that  a  certain 
frankness  paid  best  in  the  end. 

"  I  had  a  call  from  Mr.  McLean  this  afternoon,"  she 


At  Cross- Purposes  335 

remarked,  casually,  as  she  went  to  the  door  with  her 
visitor. 

Katherine's  heart  stood  still.  But — "Yes,"  she 
said,  quietly.  "  I  met  him  at  the  gate.  I — I  thought 
perhaps  he  had  come  to  see  your  father."  That, 
however,  was  a  suggestion  that  Winny  could  not 
brook. 

"I  don't  know  why  you  should  have  supposed 
that,"  she  rejoined,  bridling  delicately.  "Papa  is  n't 
usually  the  one  that  brings  young  men  to  the  house." 

"Of  course, — of  course!  But, — Tom  is  not  like 
other  men;  he  never  calls  on  girls." 

"  I  should  n't  feel  so  sure  of  that.  Girls  are  always 
imagining  they  know  everything  about  men." 

"Why,  yes!  how  foolish  of  me,"  Katherine  cried. 
Then,  with  a  sudden  insistence  of  trustfulness,  the 
more  urgent  because  it  was  not  quite,  quite  spontan- 
eous: "I  am  sure,  Winny,  you  are  very  sweet  and 
forgiving  to  him." 

"I  always  try  to  be,  to  everybody,"  was  the 
modest  answer. 

As  the  door  closed  behind  her,  Katherine  started, 
nervously,  at  the  sound ;  it  was  like  an  echo. 

She  passed  down  the  path,  with  a  swift,  fleeing 
step,  and,  heedless  of  the  deepening  twilight,  she 
chose  a  roundabout  way  home.  She  was  in  no  haste 
to  arrive — anywhere!  Camwood  was  a  safe  neigh- 
borhood,— no  harm  had  ever  come  to  the  wayfarer 
there.  But — how  cold  it  was,  and  how  dreary  and, 
— oh!  how  she  hated  the  sound  of  that  door! 


CHAPTER  XVI 

QUICKSANDS 

"  Friend,  your  good  angel  slept,  your  star 
Suffered  eclipse,  fate  did  you  wrong!" 

TOM  McLEAN  always  looked  back  upon  that 
meeting  with  Katherine  at  Winny's  gate  as  a 
turning-point  in  his  life ;  its  outcome,  as  one  of  those 
sinister  tricks  of  destiny  that  go  far  toward  making 
fatalists  of  the  best  of  us.  He  always  believed  that  if 
his  cousin  had  had  a  single  kind  word  for  him,  a  single 
kind  look,  the  old  allegiance  would  have  declared  it- 
self, the  new  bondage  would  have  loosed  and  fallen. 
He  could  imagine  how  he  would  have  seized  her  hand, 
how  the  strong,  friendly  grasp  he  liked  so  well  would 
have  restored  him  to  his  better  self.  Perhaps  they 
might  have  turned  and  walked  a  few  paces  together 
among  the  rustling  leaves,  while  he  told  her  how  he 
was  hoping,  one  day,  to  make  good  to  Archie  some- 
thing of  his  pecuniary  loss ;  how  he  was  striving,  even 
now,  to  regain  for  him  his  old  place  in  Winny's  affec- 
tion and  confidence.  At  once,  the  natural  relation 
with  Katherine  would  have  been  restored, — that  rela- 
tion without  which,  as  he  was  destined  to  learn,  he 
could  not,  with  all  his  self-sufficiency,  keep  his  normal 
balance.  But  now,  as  three  weeks  previous,  Kather- 
ine would  none  of  him,  and,  deprived  of  that  one  civil- 


Quicksands  337 

izing,  humanizing  influence  of  an  otherwise  somewhat 
arid  existence,  he  fell  an  easy  prey  to  certain  insinuating 
allurements  which  he  was  too  inexperienced  to  resist. 

His  first  call  upon  Winny  had  been  both  disappoint- 
ing and  provocative.  He  had  gone  to  her,  in  perfect 
good  faith,  with  the  purpose  of  setting  her  right  about 
Archie, — and  indeed  there  had  been  much  in  Archie's 
conduct,  subsequent  to  that  first  stormy  interview 
between  the  partners,  to  modify  Tom's  judgment  of 
him.  Once  convinced  that  his  plea  was  hopeless, 
that  his  business  career,  together  with  everything 
staked  upon  it,  was  at  an  end,  the  boy  had  proved 
curiously  tractable.  Yes,  he  was  quite  willing  to 
leave  the  small  remainder  of  his  capital  in  Tom's 
hands.  He  knew  it  would  be  safe,  and  that  Tom 
would  deal  fairly  by  him;  Tom  was  always  fair, — 
fair  as  figures.  Two  and  two  would  never  make  any- 
thing but  four  with  Tom,  not  if  his  immortal  soul 
were  in  the  balance.  Secretly,  Archie  had  small  faith 
in  Tom's  having  an  immortal  soul, — at  any  rate  he 
had  n't  any  vitals.  But  he  could  be  trusted  in 
money  matters;  that  was  sure.  Archie's  nature, 
indeed,  was  as  devoid  as  Tom's  of  vindictiveness. 
He  loathed  Horace  Gerald  because  he  despised  him; 
but  he  did  not  hate  Tom,  as  Tom  realized  with  no  little 
compunction. 

Tom  would  have  told  Katherine  all  this  if  she 
would  have  given  him  the  chance.  But  after  that 
meeting  at  the  Geralds'  gate  he  was  less  minded  than 
ever  to  turn  the  other  cheek.  He  could  take  a  blow 
— and  return  it  with  muscular  equanimity, — but  not 
from  Katherine.  Katherine  had  been  his  chosen 
ally;  he  could  not  hit  back, — but  neither  could  he 
invite  a  repetition  of  her  castigations. 


338  Katherine  Day 

So  it  was  to  Winny  that  he  dwelt  upon  the  extenu- 
ating features  of  Archie's  case, — to  Winny  that  he 
emphasized  his  good  points,  that  he  made  that  little 
confession  of  a  too  harsh  judgment  which  would  have 
been  balm  and  elixir  to  Katherine's  spirit.  And 
Winny  listened,  a  picture  of  graceful  tolerance,  of 
sympathetic  intelligence;  and,  when  he  had  eased 
his  mind  of  the  substance  of  his  errand,  she  gently 
turned  the  conversation  into  other  channels,  parallel, 
to  be  sure,  with  the  first,  but  of  a  differing  current. 

Did  Mr.  McLean  think  that  business  honesty  was 
on  the  decline?  Of  course  it  was  something  she  un- 
derstood very  little  about,  but  she  had  heard  such 
pessimistic  views  lately.  And  Tom,  knowing  the 
cause  of  bad  humor  which  existed  in  the  mind  of  the 
Gerald  family  oracle,  gave  ready  testimony  to  his  first 
article  of  faith,  the  general,  fundamental  integrity  of 
the  business  community. 

"Why,  Miss  Gerald,"  he  cried,  "if  it  were  not  so, 
the  whole  thing  would  go  to  smash !  The  entire  system 
of  the  world's  business  is  founded  on  credit;  every 
serious  breach  of  credit  shakes  us  to  our  foundations. 
Why,  do  you  realize  that  if  a  London  bank  fails  the 
shock  of  it  is  felt  here  in  Boston,  is  felt  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, would  be  felt  at  the  North  Pole,  if  there  were 
banks  there?" 

"How  interesting  that  is,"  cried  Winny.  "No 
one  ever  told  me  about  that  before.  I  wonder  that 
Archie  did  n't." 

"Well,  you  know  Archie  had  really  had  very  little 
business  experience.  He  could  n't  be  expected  to 
take  in  the  larger  aspects  of  the  case.  Now,  I  have 
been  eight  years  at  this  thing,  much  of  the  time  with 
a  great  concern  in  Wall  Street,  that  had  feelers  out 


Quicksands  339 

pretty  much  all  over  the  world.  It  gave  me  a  tre- 
mendous pull  over  a  beginner  like  Archie.  Do  you 
know," — and  he  watched  her  face,  as  he  added,  with 
what  seemed  to  himself  like  the  most  consummate 
diplomacy,  "do  you  know,  I  think  everybody  has 
been  inclined  to  be  too  hard  upon  Archie." 

"I  am  so  glad  you  feel  so,"  she  answered,  with  a 
soft  heightening  of  color  and  lowering  of  the  lids. 
"But,  why?" 

"Why,  simply  because  he  was  so  inexperienced. 
He  was  dropped  in  over  his  head  before  he  had  learned 
to  swim." 

"But,  oughtn't  he,  for  that  very  reason,  to  have 
been  more  careful  ? — to  have  relied  entirely  upon  your 
judgment?" 

There  was  a  captivating  deference  in  the  girl's  tone, 
— something  Tom  had  never  met  with  before, — and 
he  was  the  less  inclined  to  question  its  sincerity  be- 
cause of  its  obvious  reasonableness.  Yet  it  was  not 
affectation  that  made  him  protest  a  little;  it  was 
rather  an  honest  effort  not  to  infringe  upon  Archie's 
rights  in  the  direction  of  Winny's  esteem. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "it  was  not  my  personal  judgment 
that  we  should  have  relied  upon  for  safety.  After 
all,  I  am  little  more  than  a  beginner  myself.  It  was 
certain  broad  business  principles,  founded  on  the  ex- 
perience of  all  successful  men,  that  made  the  basis  of 
our  agreement." 

"And  Archie  violated  it!" 

How  could  the  girl  be  so  cool  in  her  judgment — 
— and  so  right?  Her  intelligence  and  self-control 
surprised  Tom,  but  it  made  him  all  the  more  eager  to 
win  her  back  again  for  Archie.  She  was  surely  the 
very  balance-wheel  the  boy  needed. 


34°  Katherine  Day 

"  I  think,"  Tom  said,  thoughtfully,  "that  everybody 
has  used  too  hard  words  in  speaking  of  Archie.  Why 
not  say— he  misinterpreted  our  agreement?" 

"It  is  a  prettier  word,"  Winny  admitted,  "and  I 
am  sure,  if  you  can  afford  to  be  generous,  I  can." 

Would  she  then  be  generous  ?  That  was  the  puzzle 
left  in  Tom's  mind;  that  was  why  the  interview  was 
disappointing,  and  also  provocative, — provocative  of 
a  desire  to  repeat  it,  to  sift  her  utterances, — appar- 
ently so  unpremeditated,  so  sincere, — down  to  the 
residue  of  intention  that  hid  in  them.  Had  he  influ- 
enced her  at  all, — either  her  feeling  or  her  resolution? 
He  thought  of  their  parting  words,  and  he  felt  a  need 
of  understanding  them  better. 

"I  hope,  Miss  Gerald,"  he  had  said,  as  he  rose  to 
go;  "I  hope  I  have  shown  you  that  Archie  is  not — 
is  not  as  black  as  he  is  painted."  He  had  looked 
down  upon  her  with  a  great  longing  to  right  her  life 
for  her,  with  a  great  sense  of  her  loveliness  and  her 
misfortune.  He  remembered  the  tears  he  had  sur- 
prised upon  that  sensitive  cheek,  and  by  that  token 
he  could  the  better  measure  her  self-control  to-day. 

Tom  could  look  down  upon  Winny  as  he  could  not 
upon  Katherine,  whose  eyes  always  seemed  just  on  a 
level  with  his.  This  experience  of  counselling,  pro- 
tecting, a  young  and  confiding  woman  was  some- 
thing quite  new  to  him.  Is  it  any  wonder  if  he  found 
it  pleasantly  flattering  to  his  self-esteem? 

"You  have  consoled  me  very  much,"  said  Winny; 
"I  wish  that  before  Archie  comes  back  you  could 
make  me  see  my  duty  more  clearly." 

"I  think,"  he  urged,  "that  if  I  could  really  do  jus- 
tice to  Archie's  good  qualities,  you  would  feel  that 
your — your  regard  for  him  had  not  been  misplaced." 


Quicksands  341 

"You  make  me  feel  that, — now,  while  you  speak. 
But — I  think  I  am  too  susceptible  to  other  people's 
opinions;  and  when  you  are  gone,  why, — there  is 
papa,  and  he  seems  to  overpower  me.  Will  you," — 
and  she  looked  up  like  an  appealing  child, — "will  you, 
— there  is  so  much  at  stake, — will  you  come  again?" 

And  it  was  when  Tom  came  again  that  Katherine 
met  him  at  the  gate. 

This  second  visit  had  been  an  exciting  experience 
to  Winny.  On  that  Sunday  afternoon  she  had  lured 
Tom  into  speaking  more  of  himself,  and  more  of  gen- 
eral topics  too,  and  the  really  unusual  personal  force 
of  the  man  had  been  increasingly  apparent  to  her 
She  was  not  m  turally  attracted  to  men  of  his  type, 
nor  had  she  evei  exercised  attraction  over  such.  But, 
just  now,  she  was  the  victim  of  a  want  of  force  in  the 
man  she  had  chosen,  the  man  who  had  seemed  so 
"suited"  to  her,  and  she  turned  instinctively  to  his 
direct  counterpart. 

Indeed,  if  the  truth  were  known,  Winny  had,  in 
her  own  heart,  thrown  her  lover  over  the  first  instant 
that  she  knew  he  had  failed  her.  There  needed  no 
stern  father  to  effect  the  break.  Horace  Gerald's 
daughter  would  no  more  have  entrusted  her  fortunes 
to  a  man  impoverished  in  purse,  and  attainted  in 
ability,  than  a  person  who  has  never  learned  to  swim 
would  entrust  his  life  to  an  unseaworthy  boat ;  the  risk 
was  too  great.  It  was  a  pretty  craft,  this  graceful  pleas- 
ure boat  that  had  floated  so  lightly  on  the  summer 
seas,  but  in  the  first  storm  it  had  sprung  a  leak,  and 
she  could  only  congratulate  herself  that  the  disaster 
had  found  her  still  within  easy  reach  of  the  shore. 
She  might  parley  with  the  captain;  she  might  main- 
tain a  whole  system  of  flying  signals  with  him; — but 


342  Katherine  Day 

no  power  on  earth  would  ever  persuade  her  to  set  foot 
upon  his  decks  again.  Was  she  already  looking  out 
for  a  good  substantial  merchantman? — already, 
while  that  charming  yacht  was  still  threatened  by 
coast  dangers? 

Yet  Winny's  motives  were,  perhaps,  not  quite  so 
far  to  seek.  Up  to  this  moment,  at  least,  they  were 
yet  unformulated.  In  her  advances  to  Tom  she  was 
acting  in  obedience  to  a  mere  instinct,  that  instinct 
of  conquest  which  may  be  quite  as  inherent  in  a  frail 
woman  as  in  a  pugnacious  man.  For  more  than  a 
year  her  very  considerable  gifts  of  fascination  had 
found  but  scant  exercise.  Her  ascendency  over 
Archie  had  been  too  complete,  and  her  opportunities 
in  other  directions  had  been  much  restricted  by  her 
engagement  to  him.  When  Tom,  appearing  before 
her  and  Katherine  that  afternoon  at  Mrs.  Day's,  had 
caught  her  with  the  tears  upon  her  cheeks,  she  was 
instantly  aware  of  the  interesting  appearance  she 
must  present.  It  was  a  new,  and  rather  piquant  role, 
this  of  disconsolate  maiden,  and  she  felt  it  at  once  in 
its  probable  effect  upon  Tom.  At  the  same  moment, 
she  was  struck  by  the  defiant  power  of  his  personality, 
as  he  stood,  thrown  on  the  defensive  by  Katherine's 
repulse  of  him. 

Winny  had  not  met  Tom  since  they  were  boy  and  girl, 
and  she  had  retained  no  very  clear  idea  of  him.  But 
to-day  he  impressed  her  at  once  as  being  very  much 
worth  while.  It  would  be  stimulating  to  exercise 
her  gifts  upon  him,  gratifying  to  subjugate  him.  As 
she  observed  Katherine's  reception  of  her  cousin,  she 
thought  her  stupid  and  tactless ;  and  yet  she  was  pos- 
sessed of  a  curious  jealousy  of  her.  Why  should 
Katherine  have  it  in  her  power  to  wound  a  man  like 


Quicksands  343 

that?  He  was  hurt,  he  was  disconcerted,  and,  just 
in  so  far  as  this  was  true,  he  was  subject  to  Katherine. 
How  much  more  fitting  that  he  should  be  subject  to 
herself !  She  would  caress  and  heal  his  wounded  sen- 
sibilities; that  was  a  task  after  her  own  heart.  And 
as  Winny  spoke  the  gentle  words,  "  How  could  Kath- 
erine be  so  rude ! "  it  would  not  be  safe  to  assert  that 
she  was  not  animated  with  a  sense  of  virtue, — of  that 
first  of  all  feminine  virtues  which  makes  woman  the 
comforter  of  man. 

For  Winny  was  intensely,  consistently  feminine, 
wherein  she  had  the  advantage  of  poor  Katherine. 
Indeed,  she  was  the  most  feminine  woman  that  Tom 
had  ever  come  in  contact  with,  and  this  he  was 
dimly  aware  of  from  the  outset. 

Tom's  career  had  been,  on  the  whole,  that  of  an 
ascetic ;  plain  living  and  hard  working  had  been  his 
principle  since  boyhood ;  while  in  nothing  had  his  life 
been  more  consistently  abstemious  than  in  his  social 
relations.  Indeed,  barring  his  intercourse  with 
Katherine,  the  one  indulgence  of  the  human  side  of 
him,  he  had  scarcely  had  a  bowing  acquaintance  with 
any  woman  under  forty.  He  had  never  been  a  reader 
of  novels  or  poetry;  he  had  never  gone  much  to  the 
theatre.  He  had  not  that  familiarity  with  the  anat- 
omy of  the  heart,  the  laws  of  human  passion  which,  to 
a  certain  degree,  discounts  experience  in  the  average 
boy  or  girl.  As  he  had  been  slow  to  recognize  the 
significance  of  that  first  deep  impulse  of  his  nature, 
— of  his  higher  and  better  nature, — toward  his  cousin, 
so  was  he  curiously  off  his  guard  in  his  attitude  toward 
Winny.  From  the  first  he  was  charmed  and  fas- 
cinated by  the  subtle  something  in  her  personality 
which  was  too  new  to  his  experience  to  be  understood ; 


344  Katharine  Day 

from  the  first,  too,  he  was  beguiled  by  that  ap- 
peal of  the  weaker  to  the  stronger  which  she  was 
instinctively  mistress  of,  and  which  was  a  revelation 
to  him  of  the  true,  the  commendable,  feminine  at- 
titude. 

His  discomfiture  was  not  immediate '/there  needed 
yet  the  connivance  of  circumstance,  not  only  on  his 
side,  but  on  Winny's,  too.  For,  if  the  girl  regarded 
Tom  as  a  difficult  subject,  and  therefore  exception- 
ally worth  while,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  she  had  as 
yet  no  ulterior  motive;  insomuch  that,  had  shebeen 
left  to  her  own  devices  in  the  game,  she  might  soon 
have  tired  of  it. 

It  happened,  however,  that  on  the  occasion  of  his 
third  call,  Tom  stayed  to  tea,  and  that  Gerald  and  he 
fell  into  a  business  talk  in  the  course  of  which  the 
visitor  inadvertently  dropped  a  remark  pregnant  with 
meaning  to  the  initiated.  It  was  nothing  more  than 
a  casual  statement  that  indicated  indirectly  the  close- 
ness of  the  relation  which  he  still  maintained  with  his 
former  New  York  principals.  To  Gerald,  who  had 
already  learned  of  their  prompt  and  effective  action 
relative  to  the  embarrassment  which  had  overtaken 
the  young  firm,  the  revelation  of  continued  interest 
from  that  quarter  was  of  portentous  moment.  A 
young  man  with  such  backers  might  go  far;  indeed 
such  backing  was,  in  itself,  evidence  of  unusual  per- 
sonal ability  in  the  man  who  had  secured  it.  Gerald 
did  not  pursue  the  subject  at  the  moment,  but  he 
made  it  his  business  to  investigate  matters  by  means 
of  other  channels,  and  he  was  not  disappointed  in 
what  he  learned. 

"  Winny,"  he  said  to  his  daughter  one  Sunday  when 
for  a  longer  interval  than  usual  Tom  had  not  been 


Quicksands  345 

seen  at  the  house;  "what  's  the  reason  that  young 
fellow  McLean  is  making  himself  so  scarce  lately?" 

"  I  'm  sure  I  don't  know!  Is  it  so  long  since  he  was 
here  last?" 

"  It  must  be  a  fortnight  or  more." 

"Very  likely ;  but — how  do  you  know  that  I  let  him 
come  as  often  as  he  likes  ? ' ' 

"Oh,  you  have  n't  got  tired  of  him  yet,  I  '11  war- 
rant!" Then,  with  a  narrow,  scrutinizing  look  at  the 
girl :  "  We  might  have  him  out  to  dinner  some  evening. 
The  fact  is,  Winny,"  he  added,  with  the  pompous  air 
with  which  he  was  given  to  enunciating  his  own  pref- 
erences, "  I  like  the  man!  There  's  nothing  finical  and 
shilly-shallying  about  him.  He  does  n't  wait  to  be 
told  what 's  good  for  him.  He  's  up  and  doing ! ' ' 

"I  never  thought  him  so  very  attractive,"  Miss 
Winny  rejoined,  with  a  little  defiant  action  of  the  baby 
chin — a  chin  as  perfect  as  a  sculptor's  dream.  She 
could  not  deny  that  it  was  sometime  since  Tom's  last 
visit ;  but  her  father  was  to  understand  that  his  defec- 
tion did  not  trouble  her. 

"We've  had  enough  of  attractiveness,  I  should 
think,"  Gerald  retorted.  "I,  for  my  part,  should  be 
quite  ready  to  swap  that  off  for  something  more  sub- 
stantial. Mark  my  words,  Winny;  that  young  man 
will  have  made  his  pile  before  you  know  it." 

"Do  you  mean,"  Winny  asked,  ingenuously,  "that 
he  will  be  very  rich  ? ' ' 

"Precisely! — unless  all  signs  fail.  At  any  rate" — 
with  another  significant  look  at  the  lovely,  artless  face 
— "I  wouldn't  advise  anybody  to  bank  on  the  con- 
trary!" 

The  dinner  invitation  was  sent,  and  the  two  Little- 
field  girls  invited  as  a  foil  to  Winny.  It  was  an 


346  Katherine  Day 

unusual  thing  for  the  Geralds  to  give  a  dinner, — some- 
thing quite  out  of  the  common,  indeed,  in  Camwood 
society  of  that  period.  But  the  innovation  was  highly 
approved  of,  especially  by  a  certain  young  law  student 
who  was  bidden  to  the  feast,  and  who  cherished  the 
most  devout  and  undisguised  admiration  for  the 
daughter  of  the  house. 

Yet  the  party  came  very  near  being  sadly  incom- 
plete, for  Tom's  first  impulse  on  receiving  the  invita- 
tion had  been  to  decline  it.  Archie  had  come  home, 
and  the  sight  of  his  face  in  the  street  one  day  had  given 
his  cousin  a  queer  turn.  It  had  caused  him  to  ask 
himself  just  why  he  was  cultivating  the  society  of 
Archie's  old  love?  Did  the  original  motive  still  hold? 
And,  no  sooner  had  he  put  the  question  to  himself, 
than  he  knew  the  futility  of  it. 

In  fact,  had  there  been  any  doubt  as  to  Tom's  insuc- 
cess  as  mediator  between  the  lovers,  such  doubt  had 
been  quite  set  at  rest  by  a  little  speech  of  Winny's  on 
the  occasion  of  their  last  meeting.  He  had  mentioned 
to  her,  with  the  stubborn  loyalty  that  would  not  admit 
a  change  in  either  of  them,  the  return  of  Archie  from 
the  Adirondacks. 

"Yes,"  she  had  answered,  with  a  little  sigh;  "I 
knew  he  was  here.'' 

"And  you  will  see  him,  shall  you  not?" 

"Hardly, — since  he  doesn't  come  to  see  me.  Do 
you  know,"  she  added,  with  that  confiding  air  of  hers 
which  was  always  disarming,  "do you  know,  I  think 
this  little  separation  has  been  the  best  thing  for  us 
both.  It  has  shown  us  how  matters  really  are." 

"How  they  really  are?" 

"Yes.  You  know,  after  all," — she  was  blushing 
enchantingly, — "  our  engagement  was  such  a  boy-and- 


Quicksands  347 

girl  affair.  We  were  really  too  young  to  know  our 
own  hearts." 

Tom  was  fairly  taken  aback. 

"And  you  think  now  that  you  were  mistaken?"  he 
asked,  abruptly. 

"  I  think  I  was,  and — I  know  that  Archie  was." 

"But  how  can  you  know?" 

"Oh,  from  a  message  he  left  for  me.  If  he  had 
really  cared,  he  could  n't  have  gone  away  like  that!" 
— and  instantly  the  lovely  eyes  were  suffused  with 
tears, — the  sweet  lips  took  on  such  a  pitiful  droop  that 
— he  could  have  kissed  them. 

Tom  had  never  thought  before  that  lips  were  made 
for  kissing.  There  had  been  a  moment — one — when 
he  could  have  snatched  Katherine  to  his  heart,  in  his 
own  despite  and  hers! — but,  as  for  kissing, — he  had 
never  thought  of  such  childishness!  And  because  the 
thought  crossed  his  mind,  he  could  have  kicked  him- 
self in  sheer  disgust  and  shame.  But  he  only  said, 
quite  judicially :  "It  seems  as  if  there  must  have  been 
some  mistake  about  that  message.  Whom  did  Archie 
give  it  to  ? " 

"It  would  not  be  honorable  for  me  to  say,  but — it 
was  another  girl!  So  you  see,  I  'm  not  so  wrong  in 
thinking  he  meant  it,  and — really,  Mr.  McLean,  it 's 
very  silly  for  me  to  care," — she  wiped  her  eyes  deli- 
cately, as  if  she  were  a  little  shy  about  it,  yet  would 
not  deny  an  emotion  that  had  already  betrayed  itself. 
"It  is  silly,  because, — I  really  think -it  is  only  my 
vanity  that  is  hurt.  A  girl  feels  a  thing  like  that  all 
the  more  because  she  is  so  helpless.  You  men  have 
everything  in  your  own  hands." 

And  Tom,  poor  Tom,  if  not  altogether  fooled,  was 
at  least  perplexed.  He  went  home  that  evening 


348  Katharine  Day 

quite  out  of  conceit  with  himself  and  with  life  in  gen- 
eral. Was  it  true  that  Archie  had  given  up  too  easily  ? 
It  was  more  credible  of  him  than  of  another.  He 
was  ardent  but  volatile.  Perhaps  he  shrank  from  the 
serious  responsibilities  of  life,  now  that  his  means  were 
crippled.  Not  much  wonder,  indeed.  Perhaps  he 
had  deliberately  chosen  his  independence,  and,  if  those 
tears  of  Winny's  had  really  been  wounded  vanity,  if  it 
had  really  been  aboy-and-girl  affair,why, — Archie  was 
surely  behaving  in  the  only  sensible  way. 

Tom  longed  to  see  Winny  again,  to  refer,  if  possible, 
to  the  subject,  to  satisfy  his  mind,  unaccustomed  to 
bewilderment,  resentful  of  mystification.  But  he 
refrained  from  repeating  the  visit.  Whenever  he 
thought  of  doing  so,  the  memory  of  those  quivering 
lips  withheld  him ;  and  the  memory  of  something  else, 
something  that  deranged  his  equanimity,  threatened 
his  self-respect.  No,  he  had  done  what  he  could  for 
Archie;  he  would  have  nothing  more  to  do  with  the 
affair. 

And,  while  he  was  yet  considering  his  dinner  invita- 
tion, Archie  looked  in  upon  him  at  the  office,  to  discuss 
certain  business  arrangements  that  called  for  atten- 
tion in  view  of  his  coming  trip  to  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

Five  minutes'  conversation  settled  the  matter,  and, 
as  Archie  got  up,  in  a  rather  spiritless  fashion,  to  take 
his  departure,  Tom  followed  him  to  the  door,  and,  lay- 
ing his  hand  on  the  boy's  shoulder, — for  little  more 
than  a  boy  he  seemed  in  the  curious  biddableness  of 
his  present  mood:  "Archie,"  he  said;  "  I  'd  give  a 
year  of  my  life  to  straighten  things  out  for  you." 

Archie  did  not  understand. 

' '  Oh ,  I  was  never  meant  for  business, ' '  he  said.  ' '  It 
was  right  enough  to  fire  me." 


Quicksands  349 

"Of  course,  of  course, — there  was  n't  anything  else 
to  do ;  but,  I  did  not  mean  that.  I  meant — the  other 
thing." 

"Winny?" 

"Yes;  are  you  really  going  to  give  it  up?" 

"  No ! ' '  with  a  laugh  that  was  anything  but  mirthful. 
"That  was — attended  to  for  me." 

"  But — did  n't  you  rather  take  a  hand  in  the  break 
yourself  ? ' ' 

Archie  turned  sharp  about.  Had  Katherine?  But, 
no! — He  knew  Katherine  better  than  on  that  day  so 
long  ago,  when  he  had  feared  betrayal  in  the  matter 
of  the  water-lily.  Katherine  was  safe  as  scrip- 
ture. 

"Yes,  I  did  take  a  hand  in  it,"  he  said,  soberly — " I 
knew  it  was  no  good,  and  I  was — tired  of  grovelling." 

"  But,  if  it  had  not  been  for  her  father? " 

"That  cur!"  he  cried  passionately.  "You  can't 
get  away  from  him !  He  's  the  pest !  He  's  over  every- 
thing! Tom," — and  with  blazing  eyes,  Archie  strode 
across  the  room  to  the  corner  where  his  old  desk  stood 
— where  Horace  Gerald  had  sometimes  sat  in  sinister 
consultation, — and,  turning,  confronted  his  cousin; — 
"  Tom,  I  can  stand  some  things  as  well  as  another  man. 
If  I  can  't  have — what  I  want,  I  can  shoot  partridges. 
I  don't  mind  myself — that  's  of  small  account.  But, 
Winny !  She  '11  be  contaminated ;  her  mind  is  already 
poisoned.  She  's  like  a  flower  on  a  dunghill;  she  's 
got  to  be  transplanted.  When  I  think  of  her  living 
under  the  roof  of  that — that  sordid  beast,  I — I'd 
rather  she  married  another  man!" 

Tom  was  startled;  this  was  not  the  Archie  he  had 
known. 

"Thunder,  man!"  he  cried,  with  answering  impetu- 


350  Katharine  Day 

osity;  "if  I  felt  like  that  I  'd  marry  her  in  spite  of 
herself  !" 

Archie's  excitement  collapsed  as  swiftly  as  it  had 
risen. 

"No,  you  wouldn't,"  he  said,  with  a  sudden  flat- 
ness of  accent  in  which  was  a  dejection  so  extreme 
that  it  sounded  deceptively  like  indifference; — "No, 
you  wouldn't, — not  if  you  were  I! — Because  you 
could  n't,  and  because — you  would  n't  want  to.  Winny 
knows  what  's  best  for  herself,  and  I  'm  not  cad 
enough  to  dispute  it." 

The  bitterness  of  those  last  words  sounded  very  like 
disillusionment — a  disillusionment  that  subtly  com- 
municated itself  to  Tom's  mind.  He  read  in  it  that 
Winny  was  a  hard,  calculating  little  person;  therefore 
a  person  not  to  be  feared,  therefore  a  person  not  to 
be  desired.  He  would  not  pay  her  the  compliment  of 
declining  that  invitation ;  she  should  not  imagine  that 
he  thought  it  worth  while  to  avoid  her. 

"Well,  Archie,"  he  said,  "your  philosophy  beats  me, 
and — I  believe  you  're  in  the  right  of  it.  I  should  n't 
wonder  if  things  turned  out  better  than  we  think  for. 
And,  by  the  way," — gladly  throwing  off  the  rather 
oppressive  subject — "that  capital  you  left  behind  is 
doing  a  daisy  business.  I  sha'  n't  forget  that  in  the 
long  run." 

And  Archie,  whose  nature  was  so  pathetically  in- 
clined to  friendliness  and  hopefulness,  grasped  at  the 
pleasant  suggestion,  and  called  back,  as  he  went  out  at 
the  door:  "Well,  good  luck  to  you,  Tom!" 

"By  George!"  Tom  thought;  "how  recuperative 
he  is !  It  looks  as  if  he  were  coming  out  of  this  bungle 
Scot-free." 

Then  Tom  sat  down  and  accepted  the  Gerald  invi- 


Quicksands  351 

tation,  blessing  his  fate  that  he  could  do  so  with  im- 
punity. He  had  nothing  to  fear — he — Tom!  His 
scheme  of  life  was  all  laid  out  and  there  was  no  room 
in  it  for  the  vagaries  of  fate  which  poor  Archie  had 
been  made  a  victim  of. 

"And  yet,"  he  said  to  himself,  as  he  locked  his  desk, 
— "and  yet  —  it  's  no  great  wonder  that  he  should 
have  lost  his  head  over  a  girl  like  that! " 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  CATASTROPHE 

"And  where  we  looked  for  crowns  to  fall, 
We  find  the  tug  's  to  come, — that 's  all." 

ATHERINE,  meanwhile,  was  in  eclipse.  All  the 
IX  gay  confidence  of  the  past  year  was  clouded,  all 
the  dim,  beckoning  vistas  of  the  future,  half  alluring, 
half-terrifying,  to  her  girlish  fancy,  had  suffered  oblit- 
eration. Her  horizon  was  a  blank.  It  seemed  to  her, 
sometimes,  as  if  the  very  pain  of  it  all  was  dulled,  as  if 
every  good,  honest  human  experience,  even  that  of  suf- 
fering itself,  were  henceforth  to  be  denied  her.  She 
was  very  young  and  consequently  impatient  of  even  a 
momentary  stagnation;  for  added  to  that  inherent 
need  of  useful  activity  which  had  always  characterized 
her,  was  the  youthful  craving  for  some  animating, 
vivifying  sensation. 

"I  think,"  she  remarked  to  her  grandmother  one 
day,  soon  after  Archie's  departure  for  Colorado;  "I 
think  I  am  the  most  utterly  useless  person  in  the 
world."  She  was  standing  at  the  window,  looking  out 
at  the  first,  faint  flurry  of  snow,  vague  and  indecisive, 
and  but  the  more  chilling  for  that. 

"That  's  only  because  things  have  not  gone  quite 
right  with  you,"  the  old  lady  returned.  "  You  're  dis- 
appointed about  Archie,  just  as  the  rest  of  us  are; 


The  Catastrophe  353 

only  some  of  us  have  the  advantage  of  having  out- 
lived a  trouble  or  two.  Is  n't  that  so,  Fanny? " — and 
she  shot  a  challenging  look  in  the  direction  of  her 
daughter,  who  had  just  come  in  and  taken  a  seat  beside 
them.  Mrs.  Day's  disapproval  of  Fanny's  attitude  of 
mind  sometimes  found  satisfaction  in  a  rather  gratui- 
tous exposure  of  it. 

"  I  don't  think,  Mother,  that  we  ever  really  get  over 
our  troubles,"  was  the  reply,  which,  by  the  way,  her 
inquisitor  could  have  foretold,  word  for  word.  "It 
seems  to  me  that  our  sorrows  grow  upon  us  with  every 
year," — and  Fanny  sighed  profoundly  over  a  bit  of 
needlework  in  which  she  was  about  to  seek  elusive 
consolation. 

"Well,"  quoth  Grandmother  Day,  "if  you  will 
have  it  so!" 

The  substance  of  Aunt  Fanny's  statement  was  so 
entirely  in  accord  with  Katherine's  own  views  that  she 
ought,  in  equity,  to  have  conceded  her  an  uncondi- 
tional sympathy.  But  there  are  few  things  less  cal- 
culable than  the  laws  which  govern  human  sympathy, 
and  Katherine  found  herself,  as  usual,  siding  with  her 
grandmother.  This  most  unsentimental  of  women 
had,  to  be  sure,  accepted  her  sorrows  so  philosophically 
that  it  was  hard  to  believe  them  eternal.  And  what 
dignity  could  possibly  attach  to  a  transitory  affliction  ? 
Yet  dignity  there  certainly  was  in  Grandmother  Day, 
a  dignity  that  lent  itself  to  everything  pertaining  to 
her.  She  was  possessed  of  a  certain  authoritativeness 
of  spirit  which  commanded  respect,  and,  in  a  congen- 
ial mind  like  Katherine's,  sympathy.  How  was  it,  the 
girl  would  ask  herself,  that  a  woman  who  had  lost  an 
adored  husband  and  an  adorable  son  could  be  so 
evenly  cheerful?  Yet,  while  her  young  imagination 


354  Katherme  Day 

rebelled  against  the  mere  suggestion  of  a  sorrow  sur- 
vived, there  was  that  in  the  personality  of  this  cheerful 
stoic  which  forbade  any  doubt  of  her  emotional  recti- 
tude. 

"If  you  feel  particularly  useless  this  morning, 
Katherine,"  her  grandmother  was  saying,  "why  not 
hem  some  dish  towels  ?  There  's  a  pile  of  them  on  the 
work-table  over  there." 

The  young  girl  sprang  to  her  feet  with  alacrity,  and 
was  presently  hard  at  work  upon  the  towels.  She  en- 
joyed it, — if  only  moderately.  Old-fashioned  enough 
as  she  was,  to  be  a  skilful  needlewoman,  she  could 
put  a  certain  artistic  finish  into  the  humblest  task. 

Mrs.  Day  glanced  up  at  her  granddaughter  from 
time  to  time.  She  liked  the  speed  and  precision  of  her 
work — so  different  from  Fanny's  dawdling.  The  old 
lady  was  willing  to  believe  it  for  the  good  of  her  soul 
that  she  was  destined  to  spend  the  rest  of  her  days  with 
the  least  congenial  of  all  her  children,  and  except  for 
an  occasional  thrust  like  the  foregoing,  she  was  ready 
"to  be  and  let  be,"  as  she  would  have  put  it ;  but  mean- 
while it  was  pleasant  to  have  Katherine  about.  How 
well  the  child  used  those  fine  hands  of  hers !  What  a 
pretty  bend  of  the  head  that  was !  Grandmother  Day 
sometimes  wondered  whether  Katherine  had  caught 
her  graceful  carriage  from  Elmira.  She  hoped  the 
girl  didn't  mean  to  mope  over  Archie ;  she  certainly 
had  not  been  quite  herself  since  that  time,  as  indeed 
was  very  natural.  The  two  children  had  always  been 
attached  to  one  another,  and  Katherine  had  a  way  of 
taking  other  people's  troubles  to  heart. 

Presently  Katherme,  having  finished  the  first  towel, 
looked  up,  remarking,  with  an  only  half  humorous  in- 
tention: "  The  worst  of  dish  towels  is  that  they  are  so 


The  Catastrophe  355 

soon  done!  There  are  only  half  a  dozen  here,  and 
the  first  thing  I  know  I  shall  be  left  without  an 
object.  "- 

"Well,  after  that  you  might  play  us  a  tune,"  her 
grandmother  suggested.  "Come  to  think  of  it, — 
have  n't  you  rather  neglected  your  practising  lately? " 

' '  I  don 't  know  but  I  have ! ' ' 

Now,  if  there  was  anything  that  Katherine  was  afraid 
of  just  then,  it  was  her  music.  There  was  something 
quite  alarming  in  the  way  certain  modulations  of  har- 
mony played  upon  her  sensibilities.  Indeed,  a  rash 
attempt  at  one  particular  slow  movement  had,  but 
yesterday,  proved  so  subversive  of  her  self-control 
that,  breaking  off  in  the  very  loveliest  passage,  she 
had  fled  precipitately  to  her  room,  there  to  allow  her- 
self a  prolonged  indulgence  in  that  moping  which 
her  grandmother  would  so  heartily  have  reprobated. 

No ;  music  was  clearly  not  what  she  wanted,  nor  yet 
dish  towels ;  and  she  was  a  little  shy  of  broaching  the 
subject  of  her  secret  ambition.  She  had  meant  to 
become  a  nurse  from  the  highest  motives,  to  sacrifice 
in  the  service  of  her  fellow  creatures  a  good  deal  that 
she  enjoyed  and  prized.  She  hated  to  turn  to  her  old 
aspiration  as  a  refuge  from  selfish  suffering.  Yet, 
after  all,  she  was  thinking  to-day, — if  it  was  right  to 
do  good  works  for  a  livelihood,  for  the  supplying  of 
one's  material  needs,  why  should  she  be  too  proud  to 
do  them  for  the  satisfaction  of  a  spiritual  hunger? 
Since  she  was  not  to  be  happy,  she  must — oh,  she 
must — be  useful!  She  glanced  at  Aunt  Fanny,  who 
was  already  gathering  up  her  work.  The  good  lady 
was  not  a  steady  worker;  all  her  persistency  seemed 
expended  in  one  direction.  As  she  rose  and  left  the 
room,  with  that  slight  limpness  of  bearing  that  was 


356  Katherine  Day 

so  annoying  to  her  mother,  Katherine  was  seized  with 
a  sudden  terror.  Supposing  she  too  were  to  grow 
limp  as  she  grew  older! 

"Grandmother,"  she  said,  abruptly, — "do  you 
know  what  I  want  ?  I  want  to  be  a  nurse ! ' ' 

"A  what?"  cried  Mrs.  Day,  incredulous.  The 
word  "nurse"  suggested  to  her  mind,  primarily  at 
least,  one  of  those  useful  but  not  particularly  enviable 
members  of  society  who  trundle  baby  carriages  about 
the  street. 

"A  trained  nurse,"  Katherine  explained.  "I  want 
to  go  to  a  real  training-school  and  learn  to  take  care 
of  sick  people.  It  is  so  stupid  to  be  ignorant  of  every- 
thing one  ought  to  know  in  an  emergency,"  she  added, 
feeling  instinctively  that  she  had  better  not  urge  any 
larger  philanthropic  motive. 

"  Why  should  you  be  any  stupider  in  an  emergency 
than  any  one  else?" 

"I  don't  know  that  I  should.  But  everybody  must 
be  stupid  until  they  are  taught." 

"Experience  is  not  a  teacher  to  be  despised,"  Mrs. 
Day  returned.  "When  I  nursed  three  children 
through  the  scarlet  fever, — three  at  once, — the  doctor 
seemed  to  think  I  did  pretty  well." 

"  Did  you  really  do  that,  Grandmother?  How  won- 
derful! But  then,  there  are  not  many  like  you." 

"Yes;  we  're  all  different,  I  admit.  But  when  it 
comes  to  taking  care  of  sick  folks,  why, — even  Mrs. 
Gerald  seemed  to  get  on  very  well  when  Winny  had 
the  diphtheria." 

"Yes;  but  little  Horace  died  of  it,  you  know." 

"That  's  rather  a  foolish  argument,  it  seems  to  me. 
Folks  have  got  to  die  when  their  time  comes,  little 
and  big  alike.  Nurses  can't  save  them." 


The  Catastrophe  357 

"Perhaps  not,  but, — nevertheless,  Grandmother, 
I  really  do  want  to  be  a  nurse." 

Mrs.  Day  did  not  reply  at  once.  She  was  a  good 
deal  displeased  by  the  girl's  persistency  in  what  she 
could  but  consider  a  mere  caprice.  It  seemed  to  her 
that  it  betokened  an  imperfect  equipment  for  the  de- 
mands of  life,  an  instability  under  reverses  more  like 
what  was  to  be  looked  for  in  Archie.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  she  had  overestimated  her  granddaughter's  char- 
acter, because  it  had  not  been  tested. 

"I'm  sorry  to  find,  Katherine,"  she  remarked 
gravely,  "that  you  have  so  little  fortitude.  That 
you  can't  bear  your  troubles — and  Archie's  too — with- 
out thinking  that  you  must  go  to  extremes." 

And  Katherine  answered,  with  equal  gravity,  and 
almost  equal  dignity:  "Yes,  of  course  I  am  unhappy 
about  Archie,  and  I — at  first  I  felt  about  this  just  as 
you  do.  I  did  not  like  taking  refuge  in  nursing, — 
running  away  as  you  call  it.  But  then,  it  seemed  to 
me  that  if  it — happened  that  way,  why,  that  ought 
not  to  prevent.  I  have  always  meant  to  be  a  nurse," 
she  added,  taking  her  courage  in  both  hands. 

Now  Katherine  was  undoubtedly  truthful;  but, — 
was  she  not  drawing  on  her  imagination? 

"  Strange  that  you  never  mentioned  it  to  any  one," 
her  grandmother  observed,  sceptically. 

"Oh,  but  I  have.  I  have  been  talking  of  it  all 
summer." 

"With  whom?" 

"With — Tom."  She  was  sewing  at  an  accelerated 
speed  which  caught  Mrs.  Day's  attention. 

"And  now  that  you  've  quarrelled  with  Tom,"  the 
old  lady  remarked,  pretty  pointedly,  "you  want  to 
talk  about  it  with  somebody  else!  Katherine,  are 


358  Katherine  Day 

you  two  children  never  going  to  make  friends  again? 
Family  feuds  are  inconvenient  things." 

"I  never  expect  to  quarrel  with  Tom  any  more," 
Katherine  answered,  quietly;  "but — of  course  things 
can't  be  just  the  same  after  what  has  happened." 

The  perfect  composure  with  which  the  reply  was 
made  ought  to  have  disarmed  suspicion, — whereas 
there  was,  in  reality,  no  suspicion  to  disarm.  Mrs. 
Day,  with  all  her  perspicacity,  had  quite  missed  the 
true  significance  of  that  cousinly  intimacy  which  had 
grown  so  fast  under  her  very  eyes.  Perhaps  the  far- 
sightedness of  advancing  years  had  betrayed  her; 
perhaps  she  had  been  too  preoccupied  with  Archie's 
somewhat  conspicuous  love  affair  to  be  as  observant 
as  usual  in  other  directions.  At  any  rate,  Katherine 
had  parried  an  embarrassing,  though  unintentional, 
thrust,  very  creditably,  and  she  had  every  reason  to 
congratulate  herself. 

It  is,  however,  an  established  fact  that  a  riddle  is 
rarely  solved  except  by  accident;  and  it  was  the 
merest  accident  of  phrase  and  inflection  that  gave 
Mrs.  Day  the  key  to  a  secret  whose  very  existence 
she  had  not  heretofore  suspected.  It  was  the  way 
Katherine  spoke  the  word  "never,"  the  quiet  finality 
of  tone,  that  had  arrested  her  grandmother's  atten- 
tion. There  was  nothing  positive  in  the  impression, 
to  be  sure,  and  Grandmother  Day  was  not  one  to 
jump  at  a  conclusion;  neither  did  she  ever  allow 
herself  to  interfere  in  the  affairs  of  young  people. 
She  had  merely  discovered  food  for  reflection.  And 
for  the  moment  she  was  chiefly  concerned  to  restrain 
her  granddaughter  from  any  rash  step.  Accordingly 
she  set  herself  to  dissuade  her,  not  by  a  downright 
prohibition  such  as  might  have  defeated  its  own  end, 


The  Catastrophe  359 

but  by  an  altogether  reasonable  deprecation  of  pre- 
cipitate action. 

And  Katherine  found  herself  acquiescing  in  delay, 
the  more  readily,  because  the  ground  her  grand- 
mother took  was  precisely  that  which  she  had  herself 
held  in  the  old,  easy  days  when  she  could  say  to  Tom 
that  she  wanted  to  live  a  little  first.  Well, — she  had 
lived  a  little,  and  she  was  ready,  now;  but  she  could 
not  expect  her  grandmother,  uninstructed  as  she  was 
touching  that  preparatory  "living"  which  had  been 
so  rudely  accomplished,  to  do  justice  to  her  readiness. 
She  therefore  entered,  cheerfully  enough,  into  the  old 
lady's  plans  for  her,  and  if  these  included  the  far  from 
distasteful  prescription  of  a  long  stay  in  town  with 
Aunt  Anne,  that  circumstance  did  but  demonstrate 
again  the  worldly  wisdom  of  the  shrewd  old  philoso- 
pher to  whose  initiative  the  invitation  was  due. 

For  Katherine,  as  her  grandmother  well  knew,  was 
now  as  in  earliest  childhood  peculiarly  susceptible  to 
a  social  stimulus ;  so  much  so  in  fact  that  she  was  her- 
self shocked  to  find  what  pleasure  she  could  still  de- 
rive from  the  distractions  of  the  gay  world.  As  time 
went  on,  indeed,  she  wondered  uneasily  at  her  own 
increasing  good  spirits,  and  she  had  begun  to  regard 
herself  as  a  rather  shallow  and  irresponsible  young 
person,  when  a  chance  encounter  gave  reassuring 
evidence  to  the  contrary. 

One  brilliant  winter  morning  Katherine  was  walk- 
ing across  the  Common  with  Allan  Delano,  a  clever 
portrait  painter,  with  whose  daughter  she  was  on 
terms  of  friendly  intimacy.  They  were  having  an  an- 
imated conversation,  the  impressionable  artist  being 
hardly  less  alive  than  Katherine  herself  to  the  sting 
of  the  biting  air  and  the  sparkle  of  the  sun  on  the 


360  Katherine  Day 

snow.  It  was  mid- February,  and  the  trees  were 
spangled  with  frost.  The  steps  of  foot-passengers  on 
the  board  walks  echoed  sharp  and  brisk;  and  there 
was  something  undeniably  exhilarating  in  the  noisy 
squabbles  of  the  English  sparrows  themselves. 

Suddenly  Katherine,  laughing  appreciatively  at 
one  of  Delano's  somewhat  caustic  witticisms,  found 
herself  face  to  face  with  Tom,  tramping  toward  them 
with  bent  head  and  clouded  brow.  He  looked  up,  as 
he  passed  her,  and  he  hastily  lifted  his  hat;  but  his 
face  did  not  clear.  Whereupon  an  unreasoning  ela- 
tion possessed  itself  of  Katherine,  and  set  the  blood 
tingling  in  her  veins. 

"I  wish  you  would  tell  me  who  that  is,"  her  com- 
panion remarked.  "I  have  noticed  him  before." 

"That?  Oh,  that  is  my  cousin,  Tom  McLean — a 
stock-broker." 

"Your  cousin?     A  good  deal  of  a  fellow,  is  n't  he?" 

"Yes,  I  believe  he  is." 

"A  marked  face; — I  should  like  to  paint  him." 

"  I  'm  afraid  you  '11  never  get  the  chance,"  Kather- 
ine laughed.  "He  is  not — passive  enough  to  sit  for 
his  portrait," 

"  That  's  the  plague  of  that  type  of  man.  They  're 
always  untractable." 

Tom  had  looked  more  than  untractable  on  that 
day, — he  had  looked  morose;  and  when  a  man  looks 
morose  it  is  usually  because  he  is  not  managing  him- 
self. Katherine  felt  the  change  in  him,  keenly.  She 
told  herself  that  he  was  unhappy,  that  he  was  out  of 
conceit  with  life.  He  had  looked  at  her  as  if  he  were 
afraid  of  her, — Tom,  who  was  never  afraid  of  any  one ! 
Did  he  then  care  ?  Was  he  then  unhappy  about  their 
quarrel?  And  here  it  was  that  her  spirits  rose  with 


The  Catastrophe  361 

a  bound.  Had  she,  after  all,  an  influence  upon  him? 
Was  it  in  her  power  in  this  great,  desolating  differ- 
ence, as  in  the  familiar  altercations  of  a  happier  day, 
to  say  the  word  that  should  make  things  right  between 
them?  Had  she  that  power? 

Katherine  had  learned  something  of  her  own  pow- 
ers that  winter;  she  had  found  herself  very  much 
mistress  of  such  slight  but  exacting  situations  as  gen- 
eral society  offers.  She  had  quickly  taken  her  place 
among  the  enviable  minority  who  are  sure  of  being 
attended  to,  and  the  little  fillip  to  her  vanity  had 
played  no  small  part  in  her  acquisition  of  an  easy  self- 
confidence.  She  had  also,  perhaps,  owed  something 
to  that  deep  and  vital  preoccupation  of  her  mind 
which,  despite  her  own  scepticism,  had  never  really 
flagged,  and  which  left  her  the  more  genuinely  dis- 
engaged in  face  of  superficial  considerations.  And 
because  she  was  possessed  of  a  new  consciousness  of 
power,  the  sight  of  Tom's  harassed  countenance,  far 
from  distressing  her,  gave  her  courage  to  repudiate 
the  old  sense  of  rejection  that  had  so  long  pained  and 
mortified  her.  It  had  all  been  a  cruel  misunderstand- 
ing. They  both  had  suffered.  And  suddenly  that 
suffering  shared  became  a  precious  and  inspiring 
possession.  The  poor  dog  in  the  manger!  How  he 
had  been  punished!  How  wretched,  how  utterly 
wretched  he  looked — and  how  afraid  of  her! 

And  wretched  he  was,  poor  Tom,  for  the  worst 
thing  possible  had  befallen  him.  He  was  at  last,  at 
last,  in  the  clutches  of  something  stronger  than  he; 
his  grip  was  loosening  on  everything  he  had  ever 
cared  for:  self-control,  the  integrity  of  his  own  judg- 
ment, the  ambition  of  years,  many  indeed  in  the  yet 
small  sum  of  their  aggregate.  And  the  sight  of 


362  Katherine  Day 

Katherine,  walking  free  and  untrammelled,  head  high, 
step  firm,  eyes  sparkling, — had  but  emphasized  his 
own  utter  dissatisfaction  with  life. 

Indeed,  Tom's  appreciation  of  the  sacrifice  that 
was  to  be  wrung  from  his  own  will  had  been  so  strong 
that  the  thought  of  Archie  himself  had  dropped  out 
of  his  consideration.  After  that  fatal  dinner  when 
he  had  sat  for  two  hours  beside  Winny,  lovelier  than 
ever  in  her  pretty  dinner  dress,  he  had  quite  dismissed 
the  consideration  of  Archie's  claims.  A  lover  who 
could  relinquish  such  a  girl  as  Winny  Gerald  must 
indeed  be  marvellously  recuperative.  The  word 
pleased  him;  its  novelty  made  it  delightfully  inter- 
pretative. Clearly,  the  only  safety  with  a  girl  like 
that  was  to  be  found  either  in  a  volatile  tempera- 
ment like  Archie's,  or  in  an  unsusceptibility  like  his 
own.  He  was  glad  that  he  was  so  safe,  that  he  could 
afford  to  make  a  study  of  this  kind  of  attractiveness, 
faultless  as  it  was,  and  never  offending  by  excess. 
Everything  about  Winny  was  unstudied:  the  toss  of 
the  pretty  hair,  in  such  happy  contrast  to  the  elabo- 
rate water  waves  that  adorned  the  heads  of  the  two 
Littlefield  girls;  the  very  hue  of  her  cheek,  not  red, 
like  theirs,  but  delicately  tinted.  How  sweet,  how 
childlike  were  her  eyes,  and  how  maidenly  the  cut  of  her 
dress !  The  hint  of  a  perfume  that  always  clung  about 
Winny,  evasive  as  that  of  a  wild  rose,  seemed  to-night 
an  exhalation  from  that  perfect  throat,  the  snowy 
modesty  of  that  bit  of  neck,  so  soon  hidden  in  a  filmy 
lace.  Yes,  Tom  reflected,  it  was  well  to  get  a  look  at 
life  from  his  safe  vantage-ground.  He  was  only  glad 
that  he  was  in  a  position  to  indulge  himself.  Curious, 
that  Archie  and  he  were  to  find  their  safety  in  such 
opposing  qualities,  He  wondered  who  would  marry 


The  Catastrophe  363 

this  exquisite  creature;  perhaps  that  young  law 
student  across  the  table,  who  was  paying  so  little 
attention  to  the  younger  Miss  Littlefield.  He  ap- 
peared ready  for  the  sacrifice. 

Just  when  was  it  that  Tom's  happy  security  failed 
him?  He  could  not  himself  have  told.  One  thing, 
however,  was  sure,  that  on  that  day  when  Katherine 
drew  courage  and  consolation  from  his  lowering  face, 
the  fight  was  fairly  on,  and  Tom,  the  unassailable, 
was  wrestling  hand  to  hand,  knee  to  knee,  with  his 
fate. 

Meanwhile,  Katherine,  still  in  the  bondage  of  cir- 
cumstance, whose  name  in  her  case  was  Grandmother 
Day,  finished  out  her  visit  with  the  Glynns,  and  early 
in  March  she  returned  home,  only  a  little  less  confident, 
only  a  little  less  hopeful,  than  on  that  February 
morning  when  Tom's  lowering  countenance  had  im- 
parted fresh  courage  to  her  spirit. 

Her  cousin  had  not  even  called  at  the  Glynns  during 
her  visit.  Poor  fellow,  she  thought,  he  had  been  too 
wretched  for  that!  But  he  must  come  and  see  his 
grandmother.  They  should  meet,  now,  very  soon, 
and  then, — oh,  everything  would  take  care  of  itself! 
What  a  pleasure  it  would  be  to  show  him  Archie's 
letters,  to  let  him  see  that  she  bore  him  no  ill  will, 
now  that  things  were  straightening  themselves  out 
with  Archie!  She  could  see,  at  last,  how  much  better 
fitted  her  brother  was  to  another  life  than  that  of  a 
business  office,  how  much  happier  he  would  be  when 
he  had  found  his  natural  bent,  as  he  was  sure  to  do 
another  year,  at  the  university.  As  for  Winny, — 
Katherine  had  never  brought  herself  to  believe  that 
that  was  over  and  done  with.  They  loved  each 
other,  no  one  knew  better  than  she  how  absorbingly, 


364  Katharine  Day 

how  exclusively.  This  cruel  estrangement  must 
surely  have  an  end;  it  could  not  last.  She  was  sorry 
she  had  seen  so  little  of  Winny;  she  must  go  there 
again  very  soon.  Winny  had  been  out  on  three  sev- 
eral occasions  when  she  had  called.  That  only  showed 
that  she  was  restless,  ill  content.  Archie  must  really 
see  her  before  he  went  abroad.  Ah!  here  was  a  note 
from  Winny;  this  did  seem  like  old  times! 

Katherine  was  standing  beside  the  carriage  where 
her  grandmother  was  already  seated;  they  were  to 
drive  into  town  for  a  few  errands. 

"Just  a  minute,"  she  said.  "It's  a  note  from 
Winny,  and — there  may  be  an  answer." 

She  broke  the  seal,  and  glanced  at  the  beginning  of 
the  letter.  Her  grandmother,  watching  her,  with 
some  little  impatience,  saw  a  swift,  a  devastating 
change  cross  her  features.  It  was  not  a  heightening 
of  color,  it  was  not  a  marked  change  of  expression. 
It  was  as  if  the  life  had  suddenly  gone  out  and  left  the 
vivid,  eager  young  face  mere  clay. 

"What  is  it?"  the  old  lady  asked,  in  keen  anxiety. 

Katherine  looked  up,  expressionless,  colorless,  still; 
and  then  she  laughed,  nervously. 

"Why,  Winny  's  engaged — to —  You  had  better 
read  the  letter  yourself,  please.  And — do  you  mind 
if  I  stay  at  home  this  morning?  I  must — congratu- 
late her." 

When  Mrs.  Day  returned,  two  hours  later,  she  found 
her  granddaughter  sitting  at  her  desk  in  her  own  room, 
still  clad  as  she  had  left  her,  in  hat  and  coat.  One 
glove  lay  on  the  desk ;  the  other  had  not  yet  been  re- 
moved. Clearly  there  had  been  no  writing  done. 

Drawing  near  to  Katherine,  Grandmother  Day 
gently  placed  her  hand  on  the  girl's  shoulder  and  stood 


The  Catastrophe  365 

looking  down  upon  the  young  head  so  gay  with  its 
bright  winter  hat. 

Katherine  was  not  startled;  she  was  only  obliged 
to  recall  herself  slowly  from  a  long  distance.  As  she 
rose  to  her  feet,  her  grandmother  was  rejoiced  to  ob- 
serve that  there  was  no  limpness  in  the  movement; 
but  also,  alas !  there  was  no  revival  of  the  old  spirit  in 
the  still  colorless  face  whose  eyes  unflinchingly  met 
her  own. 

"Why,  Grandmother,"  Katherine  said,  "are  you 
back  so  soon?" 

"Yes;  I  found  the  shops  rather  crowded  and  I 
wanted  to  wait  for  you  before  choosing  the  new  car- 
pet." 

"  I  might  just  as  well  have  gone," — with  an  apolo- 
getic glance  in  the  direction  of  the  unused  desk. 
"I_" 

"Yes;  I  know.  There  's  no  hurry  about  writing. 
Only — I  wouldn't  take  it  too  hard!  Winny  Gerald 
is  n't  worth  it." 

"Oh;  Winny?  I  think  perhaps  I  understand 
Winny  better  than  other  people  are  likely  to.  I  feel 
sure  that  she  thought  that  Archie  was  in  earnest,  and 
—I  think  he  thinks  so  too."  All  this  was  spoken  in 
a  carefully  judicial  voice,  as  if  it  were  the  result  of 
mature  reflection,  and  yet  Katherine  had  not  been 
consciously  weighing  the  case.  "Winny  was  morti- 
fied,— a  girl  is,  you  know, — and  she  is  naturally  so 
dependent,  and  Tom  is  so  strong." 

"And  Tom?  How  about  Tom?"  Mrs.  Day  was 
exercising  the  merciful  cruelty  of  the  surgeon.  She 
must  probe  this  wound  before  she  could  treat  it.  It 
might  still  be  that  she  was  mistaken ;  the  shock  would 
have  been  sufficiently  severe  in  any  case. 


366  Katherine  Day 

And  again  Katherine 's  eyes  did  not  flinch.  The 
strain  was  only  about  the  mouth  as  she  forced  herself 
to  say:  "Why,  Torn  just  fell  in  love.  It  was — oh, 
I  'm  afraid  it  was — base, — but  it  's  so  easy  to  under- 
stand. And — seeing  he  had  never  been  in  love  be- 
fore—  A  queer  little  tremor  of  a  smile  scarcely  eased 
the  stricture  about  the  lips. 

It  was  too  much  for  the  grandmother's  equanimity. 
For  the  relief  of  the  strain  upon  her  own  feelings  the 
old  lady  drew  the  girl  toward  her  and  kissed  her  cheek. 

"There,  never  mind,  my  dear,"  she  said,  a  little 
huskily, — only  Katherine  did  not  notice  that,  nor  the 
unusualness  of  the  caress, — "we  .need  n't  puzzle  our 
heads  too  much  about  them.  Now  you  had  better 
write  your  letter  and  get  it  off  your  mind;  only," 
— with  a  sudden  severity  of  accent, — "no  congratula- 
tions from  me!  I  have  n't  sent  any!" 

For  a  month  Mrs.  Day  watched  her  granddaughter 
narrowly,  with  growing  concern,  yet  also  with  a  grow- 
ing respect,  greater  than  she  had  ever  felt  for  a  child 
of  her  own.  And  gradually  she  became  satisfied  that 
the  girl's  first  instinct  had  been  the  true  one, — that 
for  the  moment  at  least  her  salvation  must  lie  in  some 
form  of  useful  activity.  Why  not  in  that  she  had 
herself  chosen?  She  might,  of  course,  get  over  this, 
although  in  her  own  mind  Mrs.  Day  had  grave  doubts. 
But  there  was  no  more  efficacious  cure  for  sentimental 
troubles  than  mind  and  hands  well  occupied.  Archie, 
to  be  sure,  could  always  find  his  account  in  pleasure. 
There  had  been  no  outcry  on  his  part  over  the  news 
of  the  engagement.  In  fact,  the  letter  in  which  he 
referred  to  it  was  so  filled  with  an  account  of  his  first 
grizzly,  that  allusions  to  the  event  nearer  home  had 
got  crowded  into  small  space.  But  Katherine  was 


The  Catastrophe  367 

not  like  that ;  and  something  must  be  done  for  Kath- 
erine.  She  was  behaving  admirably ;  no  one  else  had 
guessed  that  she  had  a  trouble, — not  even  her  Uncle 
Theodore,  who  always  kept  such  jealous  guard  upon 
her  interests.  But  her  grandmother  knew;  she  knew 
that  there  remained  scarcely  a  single  point  of  contact 
with  the  old  familiar  life  that  was  not  a  pain  to  the 
girl. 

Now  no  one  understood  better  than  Mrs.  Day  that 
an  heroic  endurance  of  pain  has  its  uses  in  the  world ; 
but  it  must  not  be  allowed  to  degenerate  into  torture. 
As  the  weeks  went  by,  therefore,  and  the  strain  did 
not  relax,  the  old  lady  came  to  feel  that  anything, 
even  the  most  distasteful  solution  of  the  difficulty, 
would  be  better. 

One  lovely  April  morning  she  found  Katherine  in 
the  garden,  planting  seeds  under  old  Peter's  direction. 
She  was  much  in  the  garden  of  late,  where  she  was  very 
meek  with  Peter,  as  indeed  it  behooved  her  to  be. 
At  the  sound  of  approaching  steps,  she  looked  up, 
and,  rising  to  her  feet,  she  shook  the  earth  from  her 
skirts. 

"Have  you  seen  the  bits  of  coral  in  the  maple 
tree?"  her  grandmother  asked,  casually. 

" No;  is  it  coming  out  already? " 

"  It  looks  so  to  me.  Come  and  see," — and  the  two 
walked  toward  the  house  near  which  the  maple  stood 
in  the  centre  of  its  little  round  of  green. 

As  they  paused,  looking  up  into  the  budding 
branches:  "The  coming  of  the  spring  is  as  pleasant 
as  ever,"  Mrs.  Day  remarked,  with  that  little  air  of 
authority  and  experience  which  could  dignify  the 
merest  platitude. 

"Yes,"  Katherine  agreed;   "but  I  think  I  enjoy  it 


368  Katharine  Day 

even  better  in  the  garden  beds.  I  suppose  it 's  be- 
cause we  can  have  more  hand  in  that." 

"  Perhaps  so.  That  only  shows  what  an  active  dis- 
position you  have."  Then,  with  an  affectionate  but 
not  especially  significant  look  into  her  granddaughter's 
face,  which  was  getting  a  bit  tanned  again  with  the 
renewal  of  out-of-door  life:  "That  reminds  me, 
Katherine;  I  have  been  reconsidering  your  plan  of  a 
hospital  training.  I  should,  of  course,  never  consent 
to  your  becoming  a  professional  nurse,  but — I  think 
there  is  something  to  be  said  for  the  training.  Sup- 
posing we  have  it  in  mind  for  another  year." 

She  caught  a  fleeting  look  in  the  girl's  eyes,  like  that 
of  a  hunted  creature  that  sees  escape  at  last.  But, 
instantly  the  eyes  grew  steady  again,  and  Katherine 
cried,  with  something  of  her  old  impetuosity  :  "Why 
not  begin  now, — at  once  ? '  1 


PART  III. 

'Over  the  ball  of  it, 

Peering  and  prying, 
How  I  see  all  of  it, 

Life  there,  outlying! 
Roughness  and  smoothness, 

Shine  and  defilement, 
Grace  and  uncouthness: 

One  reconcilement." 


CHAPTER  I 

AT  WORK 

"  Man's  work  is  to  labor  and  leaven 
As  best  he  may,  earth  here  with  heaven." 

SHE  '11  pull  through,— poor  thing!" 
It  was  Paul  Stuyvesant  who  made  this  some- 
what despondent  admission.  He  was  standing  with 
Katherine,  in  the  pale  light  of  early  morning,  beside  a 
hospital  cot  that  had  been  set  up  in  the  wretched 
tenement,  where,  for  three  days,  nurse  and  doctor 
had  contended  valiantly  for  a  questionably  desirable 
life.  Paul  was  looking  down,  with  a  curious  com- 
punction, upon  the  pitiful,  emaciated  form  outlined 
beneath  the  coverlet,  and  upon  the  drawn  features  of 
the  sufferer  who  was  sleeping  profoundly. 

"  I  was  sure  this  sleep  was  the  right  thing,"  Kather- 
ine answered,  softly,  though  there  was  little  danger  of 
waking  the  patient.  "But  it  was  good  of  you  to 
come  in  early.  We  nurses  are  trained  to  such  abject 
deference  to  the  doctors  that  we  don't  dare  have  an 
opinion  of  our  own ! " 

"  I  like  that! "  Paul  retorted.  "Jim  Elkins  says  you 
went  straight  against  his  orders  with  that  small  devil 
in  Blossom  Street,  and  incidentally  saved  the  case. " 

"That  was  only  because  something  turned  up  that 
nobody  could  have  foreseen, — not  even  a  doctor!" — 


372  Katharine  Day 

and  she  gave  him  a  challenging  look  that  he  relished 
mightily. 

They  were  on  a  pleasant  natural  footing  nowadays. 
This  interest  in  a  labor  shared  had,  for  the  time  being, 
superseded  the  old  disquiet  of  aims  at  variance.  To- 
gether they  had  routed  the  enemy, — there  could  be  no 
doubt  of  that, — and  if  Paul,  at  least,  had  some  misgiv- 
ings as  to  the  value  of  their  service  to  the  beneficiary, 
there  remained,  nevertheless,  the  deep,  personal  sat- 
isfaction of  success.  To  him  the  experience  was  a 
more  novel  one  than  to  Katherine,  for  he  had  been  but 
two  or  three  months  in  practice,  while  nearly  a  year 
had  gone  by  since  Katherine  had  left  the  training 
school,  where,  already,  her  skill  and  capacity  had 
found  recognition  among  less  partial  judges  than  Paul. 

"Have  you  had  your  breakfast?"  the  latter  asked, 
presently,  when  his  official  business  had  been  attended 
to. 

"Oh,  yes;  an  hour  ago." 

"And  now,  you  will  rest?" 

"Not  until  I  Ve  had  a  breath  of  air.  The  chil- 
dren will  sleep  till  they  're  waked  up,  and  Mrs.  Fin- 
nigan  is  stirring  already.  She  promised  to  come  in 
presently  and  take  my  place." 

"A  great  institution,  that  Mrs.  Finnigan." 

' '  Indeed  she  is !  She  takes  all  our  children  in  hand  as 
soon  as  they  're  up,  though  she  has  three  small 
monkeys  of  her  own." 

"  How  many  did  you  say  this  poor  thing  has? " 

"  Four, — and  a  husband  in  jail." 

"And  they  call  that  life!" 

Paul  had  drawn  a  chair  up  to  the  bed,  and  was  sit- 
ting with  his  hand  on  the  patient's  pulse.  Katherine 
had  moved  to  the  window,  where  she  was  catching 


At  Work  373 

such  whiffs  of  the  keen  morning  air  as  they  dared 
admit.  She  turned,  at  Paul's  words. 

"  I  suppose  it  is  life,  nevertheless,"  she  said,  slowly. 
Crossing  the  room,  she  knelt  down  at  the  opposite  side 
of  the  bed,  closely  scrutinizing  the  patient's  face. 
"There  's  an  entirely  new  expression  this  morning," 
she  said,  at  last,  "  and — I  'm  sure  she  wanted  to  live." 

Paul,  contemplating  the  two  faces  thus  so  closely 
contrasted,  observed  a  curious  thing.  Although  they 
were  very  nearly  of  an  age,  these  two  young  women 
whom  chance  had  drawn  together  from  the  opposite 
poles  of  human  experience,  the  nurse  it  was  who, 
despite  the  vigor  and  warmth  of  her  aspect,  looked 
the  elder.  In  the  wasted  face  of  the  sick  woman  was 
a  singular  juvenility  of  cast — an  absence  of  develop- 
ment which,  now,  in  the  momentary  respite  from  suf- 
fering, gave  a  childlike  turn  to  the  countenance; 
while  Katherine  indisputably  looked  her  full  twenty- 
five  years.  Was  it  altogether  the  long  period  of  train- 
ing, the  experience  of  others'  suffering,  that  had  given 
her  that  subtle  maturity  of  expression?  He  had 
watched  her  one  day  in  church,  as  he  was  watching  her 
now.  She  did  not  often  go  to  church, — she  could 
seldom  spare  the  time ;  but  Paul  knew  where  she  was 
sometimes  to  be  found.  And,  on  that  morning,  a 
fortnight  ago,  he  had  sat  where  he  could  see  her  profile. 
The  preacher  had  chosen  for  his  theme  the  great 
Apostle's  note  of  victory:  "Nay,  in  all  these  things 
we  are  more  than  conquerors."  The  lofty  thought 
had  found  its  response  with  Katherine  in  a  noble 
strenuousness  of  expression,  as  vital  in  its  severer 
character,  as  the  generous  but  undisciplined  ardor  of 
earlier  years.  And  now,  to-day,  there  was  the  same 
reassuring  force  and  elevation  of  countenance. 


374  Katharine  Day 

As  she  lifted  her  hand,  and  gently  adjusted 
a  lock  of  hair  that  had  strayed  across  the  patient's 
forehead,  it  seemed  to  Paul  as  if  the  touch  of 
those  strong,  tender  fingers  must  impart  new  life 
to  the  sufferer.  And  yet, — he  thought,  returning 
to  that  persistent  scruple  of  his, — what  right  had 
they  to  coerce  the  hard-pressed  soul  that  had  been 
so  near  escape  ? 

"Well,  it  's  a  big  puzzle,"  he  declared,  at  last, 
straightening  himself,  and  drawing  a  deep  breath. 
"All  we  can  do  is  to  chip  away  at  the  edges." 

"Or  else — live  in  the  heart  of  it,  like  Mrs.  Finnigan 
here," — and  Katherine  looked  up  in  welcome  of  the 
kind  neighbor  just  entering,  like  a  very  substantial 
angel  of  mercy, — broad,  smiling,  and  fairly  clean. 

"And  what's  that,  darlin'?"  came  a  sepulchral 
whisper  from  somewhere  in  the  generous  depths  of  the 
angel  in  question. 

"We  were  only  saying  what  a  splendid. nurse  you 
were,"  Katherine  explained,  rising  and  relinquishing 
her  task  to  this  capable  substitute. 

"And  that  I  'd  arter  be,  I  'm  thinkin', — me  that  has 
buried  a  man  and  three  children!"  was  the  cheerful 
response. 

"  May  I  come  too? "  Paul  asked  a  few  minutes  later, 
as  they  passed  out  of  the  house  door  and  turned  in  the 
direction  where  better  air  might  be  looked  for. 

"  If  you  can  spare  the  time." 

"Time  is  rather  a  drug  in  my  market,"  he  replied. 
"  One  is  not  overrun  with  practice  the  first  year." 

"Then  let  us  come  up  the  hill;  I  feel  as  if  I  wanted 
to  get  as  near  the  sky  as  possible  after  Dingley  Court." 

It  was  a  clear,  cold  October  morning,  sharp  and 
exhilarating.  The  sun  was  hardly  an  hour  high  and 


At  Work  375 

the  streets  were  still  almost  deserted.  As  they 
breasted  the  hill,  which  is  steep  at  that  point,  Kather- 
ine  asked:  "Would  n't  it  have  been  easier  to  get  a 
start  at  home,  among  your  own  people?" 

"  Possibly — if  they  had  been  obliging  enough  to  fall 
ill.  But  they  are  a  selfish  lot ;  they  've  never  had  any 
consideration  for  the  profession." 

"  Pretty  hard  on  you ! ' '  she  jested.  Paul  really  had 
improved  very  much.  The  oppressive  seriousness 
which  used  to  embarrass  her  had  given  place  to  a 
cheerful,  matter-of-fact  address,  capable  of  brighten- 
ing into  banter.  It  was  really  a  pleasure  to  be  walking 
with  him. 

"  I  had  a  letter  from  Archie,  yesterday,"  he  was  say- 
ing. 

"Did  he  write  in  good  spirits?"  she  asked,  with 
quick  concern. 

"Oh,  yes;  Archie  's  always  cheerful  you  know, — 
when  he  shows  up.  If  he  gets  out  of  kilter  he  sub- 
tracts himself." 

"I  haven't  heard  from  him  for  several  weeks;  I 
fancy  he  's  pretty  busy." 

"Pretty  busy,  and  pretty  well  amused.  I  knew 
he  would  take  to  the  life." 

"  I  suppose  the  mere  work  is  light." 

"Yes,  light  and  congenial.  He  hardly  feels  the 
traces, — which  is  lucky,  for  he  was  never  intended  for 
a  draught-horse.  Meant  for  the  saddle,  perhaps," — 
and  Paul's  eyes  followed  the  pretty  prancing  and  cur- 
veting of  a  policeman's  well-groomed  steed.  "  How 
long  is  it,  by  the  way,  since  you  've  had  a  bout  with 
Roland?"  he  asked. 

"  Only  a  month.  I  spent  a  week  with  grandmother 
in  September.  She  drove  a  pretty  sharp  bargain  with 


376  Katherine  Day 

me  you  know, — a  fortnight  every  two  months, — on  an 
average,  of  course, — and  she  never  'bates  a  jot." 

"  I  'm  glad  of  that.     That  's  why  you  keep  so  well." 

"Oh,  I  should  always  keep  well, — barring  accidents. 
I  can't  remember  an  ache  or  a  pain  since  the  measles." 

They  were  making  the  circuit  of  the  Common,  still 
in  full  leaf  and  blade,  though  deeply  tinged  with  the 
autumn  change.  Paul  looked  down  upon  his  com- 
panion to  gather  confirmation  of  her  pleasant  boast. 

It  was  the  first  time  that  he  and  Katherine  had 
shared  a  case,  though  he  had  manoeuvred  anxiously 
to  bring  about  the  combination.  On  this  occasion 
Jim  Elkins  had  obligingly  played  into  his  hands. 
Small  wonder  if  he  suddenly  found  himself  modifying 
his  views  of  this  colleague  of  his  whom  he  had  hitherto 
been  wont  to  regard  with  nothing  more  than  an  un- 
enthusiastic  tolerance.  But  dulness,  it  seemed, — and 
of  dulness  Jim  had  long  stood  convicted, — dulness, 
when  judiciously  combined  with  amiability  has  its 
uses  in  the  scheme  of  things.  To-day  he  was  blessing 
Jim  for  his  slow  perceptions. 

Paul  Stuyvesant's  horizon  had  widened  somewhat 
in  the  past  three  years.  To  win  Katherine  was  no 
longer  all  that  he  lived  for,  but  it  was  much ;  and  since 
his  return  home  he  had  felt  that  at  last  he  was  mak- 
ing progress.  As  they  walked  on  together,  talking  of 
Archie,  he  could  not  repress  a  sense  of  deservingness. 
He  thought  of  his  old  classmate,  moody  and  incalcul- 
able as  he  had  shown  himself  in  Vienna;  somewhat 
wild  and  inclined  to  dangerous  experiments  as  he  had 
become  in  Paris, — yet  never  straying  far  afield  so  long 
as  his  faithful  comrade  was  there  to  humor  and  con- 
trol him.  And,  now,  if  his  vacillating  genius  had 
really  found  its  bent,  Paul  might  still  take  credit  to 


At  Work  377 

himself  for  this  desirable  consummation.  For,  again, 
it  was  through  his  own  personal  and  family  influence 
that  Archie  and  his  peculiar  aptitudes  had  been 
brought  to  the  attention  of  the  authorities  at  the 
American  Legation  in  Rome,  and  that  he  had  been 
offered  that  post  as  under-secretary  which  was  proving 
so  well  suited  to  his  capacity. 

Yes,  Paul  had  deserved  well  of  Katherine,  and  she 
was  generous.  What  if  he  had  somewhat  disarranged 
the  programme  of  his  life  for  her  sake?  What  if  he 
had  relinquished  the  year's  hospital-service  which  had 
been  in  order  between  the  medical  school  and  the  for- 
eign training?  What  if  he  had,  for  two  years  subor- 
dinated his  own  inclinations  to  Archie's  caprices?  It 
was  all  to  one  end,  as  it  was  all  to  one  end  that  he  had 
begun  practice  here  in  Boston  where  he  was  a  compara- 
tive stranger,  and  where  his  professional  advancement 
must  be  relatively  slow.  Had  not  compensation 
already  come  to  him,  now,  when  they  were  work- 
ing for  a  few  days  side  by  side, — this  very  mo- 
ment in  particular,  when  those  venerable  elm  trees 
were  stretching  out  their  sear  and  yellow  arms  in  bene- 
diction above  them  both,  united  at  last,  if  only  in  a 
transitory  companionship  ? 

Meanwhile  how  the  minutes  raced,  and  how 
their  speed  was  defrauding  him!  Was  it  only  that 
talk  with  Katherine  was  always  so  stimulating? 
Or  was  it  because,  in  contrast  to  what  he  craved, 
each  limit  presented  itself  as  a  personal  injury? 
At  any  rate,  here  they  were,  back  again,  finding 
the  patient's  condition  so  unchanged,  moreover, 
that  there  was  but  scant  professional  excuse  for 
lingering. 

"  Ancl  what  shall  you  do  next?"  Paul  asked,  as  Mrs. 


378  Katherine  Day 

Finnigan  left  the  room  to  get  breakfast  for  her  double 
brood. 

"  Do?  Oh,  I  have  most  urgent  business,"  Katherine 
declared,  with  mock  importance;  "  I  'm  about  to  turn 
nursery-maid,  and  engineer  the  toilet  of  those  super- 
fluous little  Caseys  in  the  next  room,  after  which,  I 
shall  deliver  them  over  to  Neighbor  Finnigan  for  the 
day.  So  you  must  not  let  me  detain  you  any  longer." 

Paul  hesitated,  and  then,  taking  serene  advantage 
of  his  little  brief  authority:  "Perhaps  I  had  better 
stay  and  keep  an  eye  on  the  patient  while  you  do  that," 
he  suggested. 

"Very  well;  if  you  think  there  is  any  need," — with 
a  rather  sceptical  glance  at  the  tranquil  sleeper. 

And  presently  the  self-appointed  watcher,  left  in 
possession  of  the  sick-room,  found  himself  not  too 
absorbed  in  a  task  so  unblushingly  assumed,  to  heed 
the  sounds  that  issued  from  the  adjoining  chamber, — 
the  patter  of  little  feet,  the  suppressed  murmur  of 
young  voices,  the  cheerful  splashing  of  water.  Now 
and  then  there  was  a  snatch  of  laughter,  suddenly 
hushed ;  and  once  a  subdued  scuffling  and  scrambling 
became  audible,  dominated,  the  next  instant,  by 
accents  of  admonition,  low  and  mild,  but  exceeding 
efficacious.  He  could  fancy  the  scene;  the  small 
obstreperous  Caseys  of  assorted  sizes,  scrambling  and 
giggling  under  unaccustomed  restraint,  and  Katherine 
moving,  tall  and  commanding,  among  them,  yet  un- 
able quite  to  hide  the  am  used  benignity  which  is  to  be 
found  in  those  who  have  a  wholesome  recollection  of 
their  own  childish  shortcomings. 

"And  now, — what  next? — "  Paul  inquired,  rising 
to  his  feet  as  Katherine  emerged,  elate  and  smiling, 
from  the  scene  of  conflict. 


At  Work  379 

"Oh,  various  small  chores,  preparatory  to  a  terrific 
nap." 

"  How  much  have  you  slept  lately? "  It  was  useless 
to  pretend  that  she  showed  fatigue  but — really,  she 
owed  it  to  herself  to  do  so. 

"Not  so  very  much;  but  I  shall  make  up  for  lost 
time.  That  is,  at  least," — with  another  glance  at  the 
sleeping  patient — "if  you  're  a  good  doctor  and  know 
whereof  you  speak,  I  shall  sleep, — like  a  Kurfurst — 
most  of  the  day." 

"  In  that  steamer  chair,  I  suppose." 

"Yes;  I  never  knew  the  bliss  of  slumber  until  I 
thought  of  bringing  that  with  me  on  a  long  case." 

"  It  does  n't  look  very  luxurious,"  he  demurred. 

"  It  is,  though!  But  there  is  much  yet  between  me 
and  that  sybaritic  situation." 

The  inference  was  not  to  be  avoided,  and,  picking 
up  his  hat:  "Good-by,  then,  until  this  evening,"  he 
said. 

"  Good-by,  and  thank  you  so  much." 

"For  going?" 

"No — for  coming." 

"That's  better!"  —  and,  as  if  encouraged  by  so 
great  a  concession,  he  came  over  to  where  she  was 
standing  and  took  her  hand.  "  I  wish,"  he  said,  with 
a  sudden  earnestness, — "I  wish  we  might  have  other 
cases  together,  as  time  goes  on." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know  that  I  want  to  work  with  such  a 
sceptic  as  you!"  she  laughed.  "Your  conscience 
might  get  the  better  of  you  and  of  the  case." 

Yet,  in  spite  of  her  jesting  answer,  Katherine's  face 
was  very  thoughtful  as  she  listened  to  the  receding 
footsteps  on  the  stairs,  nor  did  its  gravity  relax  while 
she  busied  herself  about  the  room,  clearing  the  decks 


380  Katherine  Day 

for  that  terrific  nap  which  she  was  counting  upon.  All 
the  while,  as  she  moved  about,  performing  one  and  an- 
other homely  task,  she  was  pondering  upon  the  old, 
old  question:  Was  life,  mere  life,  a  boon  to  cherish, 
even  when  it  meant  great  suffering?  For  herself  she 
had  long  since  decided  in  a  strong,  full  affirmative. 
She  knew  the  very  hour  when  doubt  had  yielded  to 
certainty. 

It  was  during  her  first  year's  service  at  the  training 
school,  when  she  was  yet  in  the  throes  of  that  great 
revolt  which  is  the  first  vehement  protest  of  youth 
against  adversity.  A  case  of  smallpox  had  broken  out 
in  the  hospital,  requiring  complete  isolation  in  an 
improvised  refuge  without  the  walls.  A  volunteer 
had  been  called  for  among  the  nurses,  and  Katherine 
had  instantly  offered  to  take  the  case.  She  had  done 
so  with  a  half-formulated  feeling  that  her  life  was  not 
of  value;  that  she,  better  than  another,  could  run  the 
risk  involved — a  risk  no  one  attempted  to  deny.  And 
called  thus  for  the  first  time  to  confront  the  imminent 
danger  of  death,  she  had  definitively  found  her  bear- 
ings. She  had  not  feared  death,  but  she  had  perceived 
that  she  did  not  desire  it.  In  the  long  hours  of  that 
perilous  service  in  which  her  best  powers  were  called 
into  play,  she  had  deliberately  concluded  that  life  was 
precious  in  spite  of  suffering, — that  life  might  be  the 
more  precious  for  the  very  sake  of  the  suffering  itself. 
Her  patient  had  pulled  through  an  ugly  crisis,  thanks, 
the  doctors  said,  to  careful  nursing, — and  Katherine 
too  had  pulled  through, — she  too  had  issued  from  the 
menace  of  death  into  a  new,  and  a  newly  assured 
possession  of  life. 

And  now,  as  she  stood  looking  down  at  the  pitiful 
face  upon  the  pillow,  so  drawn,  so  wasted,  and  yet  so 


At  Work  381 

touchingly  youthful,  she  chid  herself  for  want  of 
trust.  What  right  had  she  to  deny  to  this  poor, 
struggling  soul,  the  saving  grace  of  that  faith  to  which 
her  own  rebellious  spirit  had  attained?  Who  could 
tell  but  that  consolations,  sweeter  far  and  dearer  than 
she,  in  the  heat  of  conflict,  had  perceived,  might  be 
whispered  low  in  the  ear  of  this  gentle,  child-like  vic- 
tim of  circumstance? 

As  Katherine  stooped,  and,  raising  the  heavy  head, 
held  a  cup  of  broth  to  the  poor,  parched  lips,  the 
woman  opened  her  eyes,  looking  full  into  Katherine 's 
own.  She  did  not  drink  at  once,  and  Katherine 
waited  until  she  should  be  ready.  The  eyes,  from 
which  the  brilliance  of  fever  had  faded  quite  away, 
wandered  uneasily  from  side  to  side,  as  if  half  in  long- 
ing, half  in  terror,  and  presently  the  hesitating  lips 
murmured : — ' '  Mike — dear ! ' ' 

With  moist  eyes,  Katherine  bent  her  head  and 
lightly  kissed  the  pale  forehead.  A  long-drawn  breath 
shook  the  feeble  form ;  was  it  a  shudder,  was  it  only  a 
sigh?  And  then,  her  habitual  submissiveness  return- 
ing, the  patient  drank  the  proffered  draught. 

As  Katherine  gently  lowered  the  heavy  head  upon 
the  pillow,  and  tenderly  adjusted  the  coverings  about 
the  poor,  thin  shoulders,  she  murmured  soltly  to  her- 
self:— "Oh,  I  'm  glad  we  saved  her, — I  'm  glad  we 
saved  her! — She  had  a  right  to  live!" 


CHAPTER  II 

RETROSPECT 

"  What  is  it,  at  last, 
But  selfishness  without  example?  " 

AS  may  be  imagined,  Katherine  had  not  been  alto- 
gether pleased  when  she  found  herself  com- 
mitted to  a  case  of  which  chance,  acting  through  the 
unsuspecting  Elkins,  had  placed  Paul  in  charge.  It 
had,  however,  turned  out  better  than  could  have  been 
anticipated.  They  had  worked  well  and  successfully 
together,  and  she,  at  least,  had  almost  succeeded  in 
forgetting  that  they  had  ever  been  anything  other 
than  fellow-workers. 

But  presently  the  victim  of  their  skill,  as  Paul  per- 
sisted in  calling  her,  accomplished  a  fairly  good  recov- 
ery, and  Katherine,  although  preserving  still  a  helpful 
interest  in  the  family,  such  as  her  means  and  strength 
made  always  possible,  found  herself  released  from 
what  had  been  an  unusually  long  term  of  service. 
This  transference  of  energy  and  interest  from  a  single 
absorbing  occupation  to  a  more  scattered  and  general 
activity  formed  always  a  somewhat  trying  transition. 
Katherine  was  sensitive  to  atmospheric  influences,  and 
she  could  never  relinquish  an  exacting  task  and  return 
to  the  neutral  quiet  of  her  quarters  in  an  old-fashioned 
boarding-house,  without  that  slight  relaxation  of  nerve 


Retrospect  383 

and  spirit  which  leaves  one  more  or  less  exposed  to  the 
caprice  of  accident. 

It  was,  therefore,  with  a  curious  shrinking,  as  if 
from  something  intrusive  and  unwelcome,  that  she 
discovered  awaiting  her  on  the  evening  of  her  return, 
a  box  of  roses,  the  like  of  which  she  had  never  seen. 
Paul  might  have  waited  just  a  day  before  reminding 
her  that  the  real  and  enduring  relation  between  them 
must  be  the  personal  one.  Of  course  it  must  be  so; 
that  she  knew  well  enough.  He  was  Archie's  friend, 
and  consequently  a  factor  in  her  own  life  not  to  be 
eluded.  But — he  might  have  waited! 

The  roses  were  American  Beauties,  then  the  latest 
novelty  of  the  florist's  art,  and  as  Katherine  lifted 
them  one  by  one  in  her  hand  and  inhaled  their  aro- 
matic fragrance,  she  was  not  perverse  enough  to  re- 
strain a  long-drawn  breath  of  admiration.  She  loved 
a  full  cup,  and  the  cup  of  their  beauty  was  brimming. 
But  the  reaction  was  immediate.  No,  she  did  not 
approve  them;  their  sumptuous  loveliness  and  fra- 
grance seemed  unduly  importunate. 

As  she  cast  about  for  the  most  suitable  disposition 
to  be  made  of  them,  her  eye  fell  upon  a  tall,  iridescent 
glass  vase  which  Archie  had  once  given  her.  Ah! 
that  was  what  she  wanted!  She  would  put  Paul's 
roses  in  Archie's  vase,  thus  emphasizing  the  bond  be- 
tween the  two  men  which  was  the  only  one  she  could 
ever  recognize.  But  still  she  was  oppressed  and  har- 
assed; she  could  not  escape  the  roses.  There  was 
something  penetratingly  insistent  in  their  fragrance, 
something  urgent  in  their  crimson  glow.  The  gift 
was  eloquent  as  a  written  poem,  although  so  discreetly 
inarticulate. 

She  picked  up  one  book  after  another, — Motley's 


384  Katharine  Day 

Dutch  Republic,  that  she  had  found  so  enchaining  ten 
days  ago, — a  volume  of  Loti,  fresh  from  the  press, — 
her  well-thumbed  Golden  Treasury — only  to  lay  each 
one  back  again  among  its  fellows.  She  was  clearly 
not  in  the  mood  for  reading.  She  had  got  to  think 
things  out,  the  only  way  she  had  ever  discovered  for 
composing  her  mind.  Very  well,  then,  the  evening 
should  be  dedicated  to  her  long-neglected  mending, 
and  she  reflected,  with  some  satisfaction,  that  darning 
stockings  had  usually  proved  an  excellent  sedative. 

The  house  was  very  still,  for  it  was  one  of  those 
quiet  hostelries  where  meek,  unattached  old  ladies 
find  a  peaceful  refuge.  The  sociable  crackling  of  the 
fire,  which  alone  broke  the  silence,  sounded  quite 
voluble,  and  soothingly  monotonous;  and,  as  Kather- 
ine  sat  beside  her  student  lamp,  her  busy  needle  weav- 
ing its  way  through  the  meshes  of  the  yarn,  while  the 
flickering  firelight  played  about  the  room,  she  found 
herself,  after  all,  hardly  more  inclined  to  reflection 
than  to  literature.  She  was  evidently  in  a  quiescent 
state;  her  mind  was  sluggish,  she  concluded,  and 
naturally  too,  for  she  had  arrears  of  sleep  to  be  made 
up. 

Yet,  presently  she  became  aware  that  the  voices  of 
the  past  were  importuning  her,  and,  lo!  something 
in  their  tenor  was  rendering  her  tardily  sensitive  to  an 
influence  long  and  persistently  denied.  Yes ;  the  past 
was  speaking,  and  to-night  its  voice  was  all  for  Paul, 
the  faithful,  the  chivalrous, — Archie's  friend. 

For  Katherine  knew  well  that  if,  in  that  past  which 
she  now  so  rarely  admitted  into  her  thoughts,  her  own 
deepest  impulses  had  never  suffered  a  check,  she  could 
not  have  so  felt  to-day  the  appeal  of  another's  claims ; 
that  if  she  had  not  believed  the  man  she  loved  to  be 


Retrospect  385 

guilty  of  bad  faith,  she  would  have  been  less  keenly 
alive  to  the  single-minded  loyalty  of  the  man  who 
loved  her. 

Ah,  that  disloyalty  of  Tom's!  That  was  what  had 
hurt  her  most  in  those  cruel  days  when,  as  her  grand- 
mother had  perceived,  there  had  remained  not  a  single 
point  of  contact  with  life  that  was  not  a  pain.  Kath- 
erine,  as  we  know,  had  never  idealized  Tom ;  she  had 
never  felt  that  she  had  found  in  him  that  prince  to 
whom  allegiance  was  due.  She  had  only  loved  him, 
as  we  love  when  nature  bids  us.  But  she  was  con- 
scious that  if  she  could  have  kept  her  faith  in  the 
integrity  of  his  character,  her  self-abasement  would 
have  been  less  complete. 

For  Katherine  knew  naught  of  any  extenuating 
circumstances  in  this  betrayal  of  her  brother  which 
to-day,  as  in  the  first  hour  of  her  bitter  knowledge,  she 
felt  herself  constrained  to  characterize  as  base.  She 
was  ignorant  of  the  insinuations  by  which  Winny  had 
led  Tom  to  believe  that  the  " boy-and-girl  affair"  had 
come  to  an  inevitable  end ;  she  never  dreamed  of  the 
impetuous  disclaimer  with  which  Archie  himself  had 
confirmed  his  cousin  in  a  fixed  idea.  She  did  not 
know  that,  deceived  by  the  attitude  of  both,  Tom's 
mind  had  been  driven  upon  but  one  consideration; 
namely,  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  principles  demanded 
at  the  hands  of  this  new  and  redoubtable  rebellion  of 
his  will ;  that  in  his  inexperience  he  had  implicitly  be- 
lieved Archie  and  Winny  to  have  lightly  extricated 
themselves  from  the  very  toils  which  had  so  hope- 
lessly ensnared  himself.  She  did  not  guess  that,  up 
to  the  hour  of  his  final  and  complete  capitulation,  he 
had  been  conscious  only  of  a  helpless  envy  of  Archie 
in  his  escape. 


386  Katharine  Day 

Katherine  was  not  inclined  to  judge  Winny  harshly. 
With  all  her  idealization  of  this  lifelong  friend,  she 
had  ever  regarded  her  as  a  creature  to  be  indulged  and 
allowed  for — as  an  exquisite,  wayward  child,  too  deli- 
cately constituted  for  struggle  and  resistance.  Even 
as  she  knew  that  if  Winny  had  undertaken  to  ride 
Roland  she  would  have  been  thrown,  that  if  she  had 
ventured  to  swim  out  beyond  her  depth  she  would 
have  been  drowned,  so  it  never  would  have  occurred 
to  her  to  exact  of  so  frail  a  nature  that  combative 
energy  which  makes  for  unshakable  rectitude.  Kath- 
erine did  not  judge  Winny ;  she  only  pitied  her.  But 
she  judged  Tom,  the  more  rigorously  because  she  had 
never  idealized  him,  the  more  uncompromisingly  be- 
cause she  had  loved  him. 

And  now  nearly  three  years  had  gone  by,  during 
which  circumstances  had  held  her  almost  entirely 
aloof  from  the  old  personal  ties.  Her  engagement  at 
the  training-school  in  New  York  had  furnished  a 
sufficient  excuse,  had  such  been  needed,  for  absenting 
herself  from  that  midsummer  wedding.  Archie  had, 
by  that  time,  already  left  the  country,  and  there 
seemed  nothing  remaining  to  divide  her  interest.  She 
had  not  returned  home  during  the  whole  period  of  her 
training,  but  her  grandmother,  who  had  had  her  own 
reasons  for  permitting  this  prolonged  absence,  had 
stipulated  that,  upon  graduating,  the  preceding  Jan- 
uary, she  should  come  to  live  in  the  neighborhood,  at 
least,  of  her  own  people  where  she  belonged. 

Since  her  return  Katherine  had  twice  seen  Winny  in 
her  city  apartment,  and  once,  six  months  ago,  she  had 
seen  Winny 's  boy — a  charming  little  person,  now  in 
his  second  year,  possessed  of  much  of  his  mother's 
grace  breaking  out  into  silken  curls  and  rose-leaf 


Retrospect  387 

cheeks,  but  possessed,  also,  of  a  pair  of  clear  gray  eyes 
unlike  as  possible  to  those  blue  ones  that  the  flower- 
like  setting  seemed  to  call  for.  Tom's  eyes  were  gray, 
Katherine  remembered,  gray  and  clear  and  honest; 
and  the  thought  had  come  to  her,  with  a  swift  pang, 
as  she  looked  into  those  startlingly  good  reproductions, 
that  she  had  not  once  seen  Tom  since  that  day  on  the 
Common  when  he  looked  so  morose  and  so  afraid  of 
her.  Could  it  be  that  he  was  happy  now  ?  Could  real 
happiness  spring  from  such  an  act  as  his?  Could  the 
discontent,  the  demoralization  of  his  face  that  day, 
have  been  precursor  to  anything  but  discord  and 
misery  ? 

Strangely  enough,  it  had  not  before  occurred  to  her 
that  Tom  might  not  be  happy.  In  the  stress  of  her 
own  personal  conflict  she  had  scarcely  considered  his 
state.  Indeed  she  had  never  been  particularly  con- 
cerned with  Tom's  happiness.  He  had  been  so  self- 
sufficient,  so  consistently  unemotional;  he  had  not 
seemed  subject  to  those  fluctuations  of  feeling  which 
answer  to  joy  and  sorrow.  And  now,  the  sudden 
thought  that  he  might  be  remorseful,  that  his  life 
might  somehow  be  a  penance,  soothed  and  reconciled 
her;  not  as  a  gratification  of  any  lingering  animosity 
toward  him — animosity  was  not  in  Katherine 's  nature 
—but  because  such  penance  was  inherently  fitting. 
There  was  reconciliation  too,  of  a  gentler  nature  in  the 
very  existence  of  the  child.  Good  had  surely  sprung 
from  evil, — since  evil  there  had  surely  been, — for  here 
was  sign  and  symbol  of  the  best,  come  to  life  in  this 
fragile  creature  with  eyes  that  promised — ah,  those 
promises ! 

"  Do  you  think  he  looks  like  me? "  Winny  had  asked 
as  she  relinquished  the  child  to  Katherine 's  arms,  far 


388  Katherine  Day 

more  practised  than  her  own  in  handling  such  burdens 
— arms  into  which  the  little  fellow  had  settled  with 
every  evidence  of  satisfaction. 

"  He  has  your  hair  and  skin  and  mouth." 

"Pity  he  should  have  Tom's  eyes,"  Winny  fretted — 
it  really  did  sound  a  bit  like  fretting — "  They  don't  go 
well  with  the  rest." 

"  He  '11  grow  to  them,  before  you  know  it." 

"But  I  don't  want  him  to  grow  to  them!  I  would 
rather  have  him  pretty  and  attractive ;  I  want  him  to 
be  like  me ! ' ' 

"But,  Winny,  you  wouldn't  want  him  too  much 
like  you  when  he  is  a  grown  man,"  Katherine  pro- 
tested. "  He  would  never  do  to  buffet  with  life." 

"  I  don't  like  buffeters,"  was  the  curt  response. 

Katherine  had  not  seen  Winny  since  then.  They 
were  all  to  meet  at  Grandmother  Day's,  at  Thanks- 
giving. Tom's  father  was  coming  on  with  his  wife, — 
the  first  time  either  of  them  had  undertaken  the  long 
journey  since  Dr.  McLean  had  his  stroke, — and  Tom 
and  Winny  could  not  well  be  omitted  from  the  family 
feast  to  which  it  seemed  they  had  not  in  the  two  pre- 
vious years  been  bidden. 

"Tom  has  thrown  in  his  lot  with  the  Geralds," 
Grandmother  Day  had  remarked,  with  some  tartness; 
' '  He  may  as  well  be  as  thankful  as  he  can  in  their 
company!" 

That  pending  Thanksgiving  dinner  was  one  of  the 
things  that  formed  part  of  Katherine 's  consciousness 
as  she  took  up  one  bit  of  mending  after  another,  bring- 
ing each  to  a  point  of  perfection  learned  in  the  days 
when  she  and  Cousin  Elmira  had  sat  stitching  away 
the  short  measure  of  that  stricken  woman's  span  of 
life.  It  would  be  very  strange  to  meet  Tom  again ; — 


Retrospect  389 

and  here  her  revery  grew  more  clearly  defined.  She 
wondered  if  it  would  hurt  much ;  she  hoped  not.  She 
believed  herself  to  be  steeled  against  any  new  inroad 
of  emotion.  No,  she  assured  herself  that  she  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  Tom,  and  he,  thank  Heaven !  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  her.  She  could  be  thankful  now, 
that  she  had  been  so  totally  mistaken  about  him. 
That  however  he  had  erred  in  his  relation  with  Archie, 
toward  her,  at  least,  his  conduct  had  been  perfectly 
consistent.  For  his  sake  she  was  glad  of  this,  and 
for  her  own,  although  she  did  not  often  allow  herself 
to  consider  the  subject. 

Indeed,  it  was  part  of  Katherine's  task  of  self-recov- 
ery to  refrain  as  far  as  possible  from  thinking  of  these 
things,  even  as  she  had  endeavored  in  the  very  begin- 
ning to  divert  her  mind  from  any  unnecessary  partici- 
pation in  that  ordeal  of  the  heart  which  had  cost  her  so 
dear.  Despite  the  vivacity  of  feeling  and  expression 
which  had  characterized  her  in  lesser  matters,  when 
real  life  came  upon  her,  with  its  last  exigency  of  emo- 
tional experience,  she  had  held  her  thoughts  severely 
in  check.  This  was  what  her  grandmother  had  per- 
ceived and  honored  in  her  from  the  hour  when  she  had 
seen  the  life  go  out  of  the  ardent  young  face. 

Meanwhile,  the  life  had  returned  to  her  face  and  to 
her  soul — a  life  rich  in  experience,  growing  daily  in  the 
perception  of  real  things.  And,  because  she  had  lived 
deeply  and  sincerely,  because  she  was  not  altogether 
shut  in  by  the  personal  limitation,  she  found  herself 
to-night,  as  thought  emerged  out  of  revery,  consider- 
ing more  seriously  than  ever  before  Paul's  strong 
claims  to  her  regard.  She  asked  herself, — was  it 
perhaps  in  the  interest  of  her  own  hard-won  integ- 
rity of  feeling? — why  she  should  so  stubbornly  reject 


3QO  Katharine  Day 

a  devotion  like  his?  Where  was  her  consistency, — 
her  good  faith — her  sense  of  justice  toward  one  to 
whom  she  owed  so  much — so  much ! 

Her  hands  had  ceased  their  labor,  and  were  lying 
idle  in  her  lap,  as  her  thought  at  last  took  definite 
shape.  Yes,  Paul  had  claims,  and  it  was  a  matter  of 
simple  equity  that  they  should  be  recognized.  Not 
now — it  would  not  be  possible  now,  nor  for  a  long  time 
yet.  But,  bye  and  bye,  when  the  self-conquest  was 
complete,  when  she  had  risen  to  the  height  of  those 
who  are  "more  than  conquerors," — who  could  say? 

Late  in  the  evening  she  stood  for  a  long  time  looking 
down  at  the  wonderful  crimson  bloom  in  which  the 
firelight  played  so  softly  and  capriciously.  After  all, 
she  was  glad  that  they  were  so  beautiful, — these  roses 
Paul  had  sent  her.  They  were  a  fitting  symbol  of  his 
character — noble  and  gracious,  and  with  a  fine  robust- 
ness too,  such  as  she  had  never  before  seen  in  a  rose. 
How  well  Archie's  vase  supported  them,  even  as  the 
thought  of  Archie  upheld  and  prospered  the  thought 
of  Paul  in  her  mind.  She  was  glad  they  suited  the 
vase  so  well.  She  wished  Archie  could  see  them,  and, 
oh ! — if  she  could  only  see  Archie !  That  was  the  spon- 
taneous thing.  Th  at  longing  for  a  sight  of  her  brother. 
If  she  could  only  believe  that  he  needed  her! 

How  unworthy  it  all  was! — she  thought,  as  she 
stood  quaffing  that  rapturous  color  and  fragrance. 
Out  of  sheer  selfishness  she  was  ignoring  her  debt  to 
Paul — Paul  to  whom  Archie  owed  all  that  she  herself 
had  been  unable  to  give  him;  and  she  was  longing 
now  to  thrust  herself  into  her  brother's  life, — not  be- 
cause he  needed  her,  but  because  she  needed  him !  Ah, 
that  was  the  real  thing — more  real  even  than  the  work 
which  had  so  long  absorbed  her  best  energies. 


Retrospect  391 

Katherine  had  never  considered  herself  as  having  a 
peculiar  mission  in  life.  Ardent  as  had  been  her  con- 
secration to  this  labor  of  love  among  the  poor,  she 
never  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  she  had  entered  upon 
it  as  an  escape  from  her  own  personal  entanglements. 
Nor  did  she  regard  her  equipment  as  better  than  that 
of  many  others  whose  service  in  the  same  cause  a  little 
money  might  secure.  The  work  interested  her  deeply, 
and  her  personal  fitness  for  it  was  doubtless  far 
more  exceptional  than  she  imagined ;  but  she  always 
looked  upon  it  as  an  activity  embraced  primarily  for 
her  own  sake. 

And  that  same  perception  of  the  comparative  unim- 
portance of  labors  which  might  be  performed  as  well 
by  another,  was  making  her  to-day  the  more  sensitive 
to  a  personal  claim  which  she  and  she  alone  could 
meet.  Paul  had  loved  her  for  nine  years;  his 
happiness  was  indisputably  in  her  hands.  Was 
she  too  selfish  ever  to  school  herself  to  meet 
that  need?  Should  she  not  some  day  succeed 
in  so  bringing  it  home  to  herself  as  to  coerce  her 
own  heart  ? 

Well,  she  would  do  her  best,  but  she  was  afraid 
there  would  never  be  anything  very  spontaneous 
about  it! 

The  roses  there!  They  were  beautiful,  perfect,  be- 
yond any  roses  she  had  known.  But — how  soon  they 
must  fade!  How  long  the  fragile  glass  would  outlast 
them !  And  so  her  affection  for  Archie  was  the  real,  the 
enduring  thing. 

She  lifted  the  roses,  to  place  them  for  the  night  in  a 
deep,  ample  bowl,  and  as  she  did  so,  one  of  the  stems 
caught  in  a  fold  of  the  curiously  involuted  glass, 
causing  it  to  tilt  a  bit  off  its  bottom,  It  startled  her, 


392  Katherine  Day 

sharply, —  for  the  best-trained  nerves  shrink  at  the 
threat  of  breaking  glass.  But  instantly  the  vase  had 
steadied  itself. 

"I  wish,"  she  said  to  herself,  as  she  placed  it  in  a 
safer  position,  "  I  wish  it  were  not  so  brittle." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   DIFFERENCE 
"You  were  wrong,  you  see;   that  's  well  to  see  though  late." 

A  HEALTH  to  Grandmother  Day!  to  be  drunk 
standing!" 

In  an  instant  all  were  on  their  feet,  even  Dr.  Mc- 
Lean, to  whom  the  act  of  rising  was  still  a  somewhat 
complicated  problem.  He  had  the  seat  of  honor  at 
Mrs.  Day's  right,  and,  as  he  steadied  himself  with  one 
hand  on  the  back  of  his  chair,  he  responded  to  Uncle 
Theodore's  toast  with  a  fervent: — "God  bless  her! " 

As  all  the  company  drained  their  slender  sherry 
glasses  to  the  innermost  point,  and  set  them  on  the 
table  before  them,  they  felt  that  a  very  solemn  family 
function  had  been  satisfactorily  performed.  A  word 
may  be  eloquent  as  an  oration  when  it  conies  from  a 
full  heart,  and  Grandmother  Day  was  dearly  beloved 
and  honored. 

Yet  even  a  Thanksgiving  reunion  has  been  known 
to  include  an  alien  element,  and: — "How  could  she 
help  giving  him  her  hand? " — Mrs.  McLean  exclaimed, 
under  her  breath.  For  Winny,  whose  place  was  next 
her  father-in-law's,  was  quietly  taking  her  seat,  leaving 
him  to  meet,  unaided,  the  still  more  difficult  prob- 
lem of  sitting  down.  Happily,  however,  Grand- 
mother Day's  perceptions  were  no  less  quick  than  her 


394  Katharine  Day 

daughter's,  and,  with  an  alertness  which  belied  her 
years,  she  had  come  to  the  invalid's  assistance. 

"Oh,  I  beg  pardon!  I  did  n't  think!"  Winny  mur- 
mured, smiling  up  into  her  father-in-law's  face  with  a 
sweetness  that  might  well  have  atoned  for  any  lapse. 

"She  did  n't  feel!  That  's  what  's  the  matter  with 
that  young  lady!"  Mr.  Glynn  remarked,  with  unac- 
customed severity,  and  Winny 's  mother-in-law,  dis- 
tinguished though  she  was  for  an  unprejudiced  mind, 
found  nothing  to  say  in  reply. 

"A  good  looking  clan,  we  Days;  don't  you  think?" 
Theodore  hastened  to  observe,  with  a  facetious  inclu- 
sion of  himself  in  his  encomium.  He  felt  the  asperity 
of  his  previous  remark  to  have  been  ill-timed,  and  he 
was  glad  of  the  diversion,  which  suggested  itself  to  his 
mind  naturally  enough,  as,  from  his  post  of  vantage 
at  the  foot  of  the  table,  he  looked  from  one  to  another 
of  the  comely  assembly.  "  Katherine  grows  hand- 
somer every  year,"  he  added.  "Have  you  noticed 
that?" 

"She  was  sure  to,"  was  Aunt  Sarah's  confident 
reply. 

"I  used  to  think  her  only  good  looking,"  Uncle 
Theodore  went  on ;  "but  if  we  were  to  meet  her  for  the 
first  time  to-day  I  think  we  should  be  obliged  to  tax 
her  with  something  very  like  beauty." 

"Yes ;  I  felt  it  at  once,  when  we  first  arrived.  And 
she  has  distinction  too." 

They  were  having  a  delightful  time,  Aunt  Sarah  and 
Uncle  Theodore,  with  their  little  duet  of  praise  for 
their  unconscious  favorite. 

Meanwhile,  the  succession  of  winged  victims, — tur- 
key, boiled  and  roasted,  chicken  pie  and  ducks — had 
gone  their  ways,  and  now  the  blazing  plum-pudding 


The  Difference  395 

was  making  its  entry,  to  the  extreme  glee  of  the 
younger  children  of  the  family  whose  dinner  had  been 
served  at  a  table  in  the  big  bay-window,  and  who  wit- 
nessed, with  unrestrained  enthusiasm,  the  wonders  of 
that  peripatetic  volcano.  And  it  was  at  this  juncture 
that  Winny's  nursery  maid  appeared  at  the  door, 
holding  little  Arthur  up  to  the  admiration  of  the  com- 
pany— little  Arthur  Darling,  who  had,  as  yet,  evinced 
no  inclination  to  quarrel  with  his  name. 

"Bring  the  little  man  over  here,"  cried  the  en- 
thusiastic grandfather.  "Bring  him  over  here!" 

"  Let  him  walk! "  Tom  interposed.  "  He  must  walk 
to  his  first  Thanksgiving  dinner!" 

As  the  nurse  set  the  tiny  fellow  down,  Tom  sprang 
to  his  feet,  and  placed  his  big  forefinger  at  the  child's 
service.  The  small  hand  grasped  it  quite  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  the  little  fellow  toddled  manfully  along 
to  his  grandfather's  chair.  It  was  pretty  to  see  Tom 
lift  him  to  the  old  man's  knees,  supporting  him  the 
while,  that  he  might  not  press  too  heavily  there. 

"And  Grandmother  Day!  give  her  your  hand,  too, 
Arthur;  she's  the  Head  of  the  House!" 

"Let'  s  have  a  lick  at  him  over  here!"  cried  Aunt 
Sophia's  Dick,  a  handsome  collegian  whose  seat  was 
next  Katherine's.  And  Tom,  only  too  proud  to  ex- 
hibit his  son's  prowess,  guided  the  charming  little 
tottering  figure  all  round  the  big  table,  while  aunts  and 
cousins,  and  uncles  too,  claimed  toll  of  the  baby  lips 
and  cheek. 

"You  'd  better  sit  down  and  eat  your  pudding," 
Winny  ventured,  once,  with  wifely  regard  for  the 
proprieties ;  but : — 

' '  Thanksgiving  puddings  are  better  for  the  keeping, ' ' 
Grandmother  Dav  declared,  as  she  watched  the 


396  Katherine  Day 

progress  of  the  little  prince  from  subject  to  subject. 
Her  attention  became  a  trifle  keener,  as  the  two 
paused  beside  Katherine's  chair. 

"That  's  Katherine.  you  know,"  Dick  announced 
ceremoniously.  "What  have  you  got  to  say  to  Kath- 
erine, young  man?" 

The  little  face  had  lifted  itself  to  hers,  quite  of  its 
own  accord,  and,  as  she  stooped  and  gently  kissed  the 
soft  cheek,  the  child  lisped  tentatively : — "  Kath-rin ! " 

"A  new  word!"  cried  Winny,  with  sudden  anima- 
tion. 

"And  a  mighty  good  word,  too !"  Tom  declared 
looking  down  upon  his  cousin  half  defiantly,  as  if  he 
dared  her  not  to  accept  the  peace-offering  after  all 
those  years. 

"It's  much  obliged  for  the  compliment,"  Kath- 
erine laughed,  with  a  friendly  glance,  as  she 
lifted  her  head;  and  Tom  thought  a  Thanksgiving 
party  was  an  uncommonly  comfortable  sort  of  func- 
tion. 

"  He  's  a  very  forward  child;  don't  you  think  so?" 
Winny  asked,  with  a  pretty  deference  to  the  house's 
head,  when,  a  few  minutes  later,  the  baby  had  been 
carried  away,  and  the  pudding  had  resumed  its  normal 
importance. 

"Yes,  he  is,"  Mrs.  Day  assented.  "I  don't  think 
any  of  my  children  talked  so  early." 

" Nor  mine,"  said  Aunt  Anne.  "When  Teddy  was 
eighteen  months  old  he  could  say  nothing  but  '  mam- 
ma'." 

"  He  probably  thought  that  that  left  nothing  to  be 
desired,"  Uncle  Theodore  interposed,  with  gratifying 
gallantry ;  and  Aunt  Anne  blushed  as  prettily  as  ever 
she  had  done  in  the  Lyons  velvet  cloak,  to  which  she 


The  Difference  397 

always  persisted  in  attributing  the  conquest  of  her 
admired  consort. 

"And  yet  Tom  thinks  he's  too  young  to  travel," 
Winny  continued,  unmindful  of  the  trifling  interlude. 

"Travel?  Where  to?"  asked  Grandmother  Day. 

"To  Europe,"  Winny  replied.  "I  want  to  go  in 
the  spring.  Tom  has  never  been,  you  know,  and  it  's 
really  time  he  went.  Do  you  think  Arthur  is  too 
young?"  She  did  not  say  "grandmother";  she  had 
never  been  invited  to  do  so,  and  she  was  just  a  little  in 
awe  of  the  handsome  old  woman  who  was  Archie's 
grandmother,  but  not  her  husband's, — really. 

Mrs.  Day,  for  her  part,  was  aware  that  she  had  no 
jurisdiction  here,  and  where  opposition  was  futile  she 
preferred  acquiescence.  She  knew  Winny  well  enough 
to  feel  sure  that  she  would  carry  her  point  at  any  cost, 
so  she  replied,  to  the  young  mother's  intense  gratifica- 
tion:— "  I  should  think  this  was  a  more  favorable  time 
than  a  year  or  two  later.  A  good  nurse  can  do  very 
well  with  a  child  of  two,  and  you  and  Tom  would  have 
considerable  freedom." 

Everybody  was  surprised  at  Mrs.  Day's  answer,  and 
no  one  more  disagreeably  so  than  Tom.  He  was  sit- 
ting on  the  same  side  of  the  table  with  his  wife,  and 
Katherine  could  see  them  both.  In  fact,  she  could 
see  more  of  Tom  than  in  the  old  days,  since,  to  oblige 
Winny,  he  had  had  his  beard  shaved.  At  his  grand- 
mother's words,  his  mouth,  which  was  an  expressive 
one,  set  itself  in  a  curiously  restrained  line  above  the 
stubborn  chin,  and  Katherine  felt  quite  sorry  for  the 
exposure  which  rendered  necessary  such  command  of 
feature. 

"Oh,  I  'm  so  glad  you  agree  with  me!"  Winny  was 
saying.  "  It  seems  to  me  such  a  wise  thing  to  do ;  and 


398  Katharine  Day 

now,  I  'm  sure  Tom  will  come  round.  I  only  wish  we 
could  be  a  little  more  of  a  party,"  she  continued. 
"You  can  make  so  much  better  arrangements  for 
more  people;  don't  you  think  so,  Father?"  It  was 
surprising  how  easily  Winny  had  adopted  the  '  father ' 
and  'mother'  toward  these  new  relatives  whom  she 
had  seen  but  once  before  in  her  life.  She  was  wary  of 
uncertain  ground,  but  would  never  forbear  a  legiti- 
mate claim. 

"It  may  be,"  the  old  gentleman  replied,  adding, 
with  entire  sincerity, — for  he  admired  Tom's  wife  ex- 
tremely,— "but  I  should  n't  blame  Tom  if  he  preferred 
keeping  you  to  himself." 

"Oh,  Tom  is  not  as  polite  as  you,"  Winny  cried, 
greatly  pleased  at  this  little  tribute.  "  He  has  never 
thought  of  putting  it  that  way ! ' ' 

"Ah,  my  dear,  'still  waters  run  deep',"  Tom's 
father  admonished  her,  wishing  that  he  could  see  his 
son's  face  and  gather  confirmation  of  his  pretty 
theories.  But  Katherine  saw  it,  and  saw  no  relaxa- 
tion in  its  expression. 

"Where  should  you  think  of  going?"  Uncle  David 
Hollis  inquired.  Uncle  David  was  a  silent  man,  but 
his  hobby  was  foreign  travel,  of  which  he  had  had  but 
one  scant  taste. 

"I  should  like  to  start  in  time  for  Italy,"  Winny 
answered.  "I  've  never  been  south  of  Florence,  you 
know.  Why,  Katherine!"  she  cried,  with  a  spon- 
taneity that  could  not  have  been  feigned ;  "  why  don't 
you  come  with  us,  and  then  you  could  see  Archie ! " 

At  this  audacious  suggestion  the  whole  company 
caught  its  breath,  as  it  were,  and  then  everybody 
began  talking  at  once  on  unrelated  subjects,  Kath- 
erine answering  under  cover  of  the  general  murmur : — » 


The  Difference  399 

"  I  expect  to  be  very  busy  at  home  next  summer,  and 
— Archie  has  half  promised  to  come  over." 

"What  a  pity !  Then  we  may  miss  him  altogether! " 
Tom  looked  a  trifle  annoyed,  but  not  in  the  least 
embarrassed.  The  impression  Katherine  received  was 
that  he  merely  objected  to  having  his  plans  discussed. 
He  was  sitting  almost  directly  opposite  her  and  she 
felt  as  if  she  knew  every  thought  that  passed  through 
his  mind.  Tom  had  changed, — a  good  deal.  He 
looked  older,  and  somehow  more  complex,  but  the 
wonted  familiarity  of  impression  had  reasserted  itself. 
She  had  not  realized  how  intimately  she  had  learned 
to  read  his  mind,  long  ago,  when  neither  of  them  had 
anything  to  conceal ;  and  to-day  she  could  not  rid  her- 
self of  the  idea  that  she  knew  what  was  passing  there. 
No,  there  was  no  faintest  indication  of  an  uneasy  con- 
science, nor  did  the  face  she  knew  so  well  look  callous. 
On  the  contrary,  there  was  a  hint  of  sensitiveness 
which,  conflicting  as  it  did  with  the  familiar  stubborn- 
ness, was  perhaps  the  very  thing  that  accounted  for 
the  new  complexity.  This  was  all  very  contradictory, 
in  view  of  the  state  of  things  that  circumstances 
seemed  to  call  for.  In  vain  Katherine  told  herself 
that  she  had  lost  the  key,  that  she  could  no  longer  trust 
her  old  ability  to  interpret;  deep  back  in  her  mind 
was  an  unshakable  conviction  that  she  did  under- 
stand him,  and  better  than  ever,  now  that  the  personal 
interest  had  died  a  natural  death. 

How  they  were  talking — all  these  aunts  and  cou- 
sins !  What  a  lot  they  did  find  to  say !  Here  was  Dick, 
in  the  middle  of  a  long  account  of  the  freshman  base- 
ball team,  which  he  had  just  been  elected  to,  and  she 
was  saying;  "yes,  yes" — to  all  sorts  of  propositions 
which  she  did  not  hear.  Come  to  think  of  it,  she  had 
26 


400  Katherine  Day 

been  saying  "yes,  yes,"  for  ever  so  long,  and  looking 
straight  into  Dick's  face  too,  without  the  slightest 
suspicion  on  his  part,  that  she  did  not  see  him.  After 
all,  people  knew  very  little  of  what  was  going  on  in  a 
person's  mind.  . 

They  were  leaving  the  table  now,  and  Tom  had 
instantly  joined  her.  The  men  were  allowed  to  smoke 
all  over  the  house  on  Thanksgiving  day,  and  the 
family  was  breaking  up  into  small  knots,  scattered 
about  the  various  living-rooms,  while  a  bevy  of  the 
youngest  perched  chattering  and  scuffling  on  the 
broad  stairs. 

"What  do  you  think  of  the  boy  ? "  Tom  was  asking, 
as  they  passed  into  the  long  parlor,  and  took  possession 
of  an  old  satin-covered  ottoman  that  had  stood  in  its 
same  corner  before  either  of  them  was  born.  It  was 
still  broad  daylight,  and  the  sunshine  was  slanting 
through  the  west  windows. 

"He  is  quite  wonderful,"  said  Katherine,  gently. 
"  I  should  think  you  would  never  get  used  to  him." 

"  I  never  do!  And  do  you  know,  his  comical  little 
mind  is  just  as  perfect  as  his  absurd  little  body.  Did 
you  notice  how  well  he  got  your  name?  It  is  quite  a 
difficult  name  for  a  child."  In  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
moment  Tom  had  forgotten  to  light  his  cigar.  '  We  '11 
have  him  in  again  pretty  soon,  before  we  send  him 
home,  and  I  want  you  to  notice  the  way  he  plants  his 
feet  out.  You  can  really  hear  his  little  heels  go  down 
when  he  's  coming  toward  you  across  the  room." 

"It  must  be  all  strength  then,  for  there  can't  be 
much  weight.  He  's  a  perfect  little  Peasblossom." 

"That  's  just  it;  it  's  sheer  muscle.  And  yet,  he 
weighs  more  than  you  would  think.  It  's  nearly 
twenty-five  pounds  already!" 


The  Difference  401 

It  did  not  occur  to  Tom  to  apologize  for  his  little 
rhapsody.  Yet  if  it  was  not  the  first  time  he  had  been 
betrayed  into  talking  about  his  boy,  he  was  usually 
at  pains  to  make  game  of  himself  a  bit,  with  a  view, 
perhaps,  to  forestalling  any  impulse  of  mockery  in  his 
hearer.  There  was  no  need  of  that  with  Katherine, 
however;  Katherine  would  know  how  to  appreciate 
the  little  chap.  She  must  see  a  good  deal  of  children 
as  she  went  nursing  from  house  to  house;  it  was  not 
likely  that  she  had  ever  met  with  one  like  Arthur. 
And,  by  the  way,  how  about  all  that  nursing? 

Tom  had  changed  his  seat  to  a  big  arm-chair  facing 
the  ottoman.  "  You  put  it  through,  after  all ;  did  n't 
you? "  he  was  saying.  "  Do  you  know,  I  had  a  notion 
at  one  time  that  it  might  all  end  in  dreams." 

"My  being  a  nurse,  you  mean?" 

"Yes;  you  talked  about  putting  it  off,  and  that  's 
always  risky.  Have  you  got  out  of  it  all  you  thought 
for?" 

"  I  don't  think  I  was  expecting  to  get  so  very  much 
out  of  it,"  Katherine  answered,  thoughtfully.  "I 
believe  I  was  young  and  foolish  enough  to  fancy  it  was 
other  people  who  were  to  profit  by  it.  But  I  have 
learned  better,"  she  added,  with  a  wise  little  smile 
that  was  very  winning. 

"Why,  what  do  you  mean?  You  must  surely  know 
that  you  're  doing  a  lot  of  good!" 

"A  little,  perhaps, — though  it  's  nothing  somebody 
else  might  not  do  just  as  well.  As  you  say,  it  's  I  who 
am  the  chief  gainer ;  the  good  it  does  me  is  the  thing 
that  nobody  else  could  take  my  place  in.  Yes,"  she 
added,  musingly,  "I  've  got  out  of  it  a  great  deal  more 
than  I  thought  for." 

Tom  was  leaning  forward  in  his  chair,  his  cigar  still 


4O2  Katherine  Day 

unlighted.  He  had  never  depended  much  on  the 
luxuries  of  life;  even  his  after-dinner  smoke  was  not 
essential  to  his  comfort.  His  hands  had  dropped  be- 
tween his  knees,  and  he  was  pondering  something. 
He  looked  older  than  he  had  a  few  minutes  ago,  when 
he  was  talking  of  the  boy. 

"Curious,"  he  said,  without  glancing  up — the  image 
of  Katherine  sitting  there  with  her  head  thrown  back 
against  the  cushion  in  an  easy  attitude  of  contempla- 
tion, the  very  expression  of  her  face,  as  she  listened  to 
his  words,  was  as  plain  to  his  mind  as  if  his  eyes  had 
been  fixed  upon  it, — "Curious,  that  you  should  have 
been  the  one  0f  us  two  to  do  what  you  set  out  to  do. 
Now  I  should  have  thought — 

"It  was  natural  enough,"  Katherine  interposed, 
though  she  was  aware  of  the  effort  it  cost  her.  ' '  In  my 
case  nothing  better  intervened." 

"Intervened!  What  an  odd  expression!  So  you 
would  say  that  matrimony  intervened — and  that  it 
was  better!" 

This  would  never  do,  and  she  cried,  rather  precipi- 
tately:— "Oh,  I  was  not  thinking  of  you,  I  was  think- 
ing of  myself.  It  seemed  altogether  the  best  thing 
I  could  make  of  my  life,  so  I  did  it." 

"There  it  is  again,"  Tom  insisted;  "it  seemed  the 
best  thing  and  so  you  did  it.  Now  what  I  wanted 
to  do  seemed  the  best  thing  all  the  time,  and  I 
did  n't  do  it!" 

There  was  no  special  appeal  for  sympathy  in  the 
remark ;  it  seemed  more  in  the  nature  of  a  statement 
of  fact.  Yet  suddenly  Katherine  felt  deeply,  piti- 
fully sorry  for  him.  The  impression  of  power  checked 
was  very  strong;  the  man's  whole  attitude  as  he  sat 
there,  with  his  eyes  fixed  upon  the  floor,  his  unlighted 


The  Difference  403 

cigar  in  his  hand,  bespoke  as  plain  as  words, — at  least 
to  Katherine's  understanding — a  baffled  ambition,  a 
general  distaste  for  life. 

"But  there  's  time  enough,"  she  urged. 

"Oh,  yes!  There  's  time  enough!" — and  he  glanced 
involuntarily  across  the  room  to  where  Winny  sat  talk- 
ing with  Ned  Hollis,  Dick's  elder  brother. 

Winny  was  looking  her  very  prettiest  to-day — lis- 
tening, with  the  rapt  attention  she  was  mistress  of,  to 
the  young  landscape-gardener's  account  of  the  pro- 
jected park  system. 

"How  interesting  that  is!"  they  heard  her  say. 
"No  one  ever  told  me  that  before!" — and  Tom  half 
expected  her  to  add,  as  she  had  done  on  a  certain 
memorable  occasion  in  the  past :  "I  wonder  that 
Archie  did  n't." 

"What  puppets  we  are!"  he  muttered  under  his 
breath,  and  springing  impatiently  to  his  feet.  Then, 
recovering  himself  sharply,  he  made  as  if  he  had  only 
meant  to  change  his  seat. 

"  I  always  like  a  chair  I  can  handle,"  he  remarked, 
drawing  up  one  devoid  of  arms,  and  seating  himself  in 
his  favorite  attitude  astride  of  it,  which  brought  him 
with  his  back  to  Winny 's  corner. 

And  Katherine,  as  they  talked  together  of  less 
dubious  themes,  glanced,  from  time  to  time,  past 
Tom's  energetic  figure,  toward  that  little  group  of  two, 
noting  the  increasing  fervor  with  which  Ned  sought  to 
interest  his  pretty  companion. 

Was  it  any  wonder?  —  Katherine  asked  herself. 
How  could  Winny  fail  to  captivate  every  one  with 
whom  she  came  in  contact?  And  why  should  she  not 
enj oy  doing  so  ?  How  could  it  be  anything  but  pleasant 
and  amusing  to  see  a  headstrong  youngster  like  Ned 


404  Katherine  Day 

reduced  to  a  pulp  of  admiration  and  assiduity?  We 
all  enjoy  the  exercise  of  our  peculiar  powers!  How 
happy  she  herself  had  been,  the  other  evening,  when 
one  of  her  poorest  patients  had  cried:  "O  Miss  Day! 
It  makes  me  feel  better  just  to  have  you  take  hold  of 
my  hand!" 

What  was  that  Tom  was  saying?  That  his  father 
and  mother  were  coming  to  spend  Sunday  with  them. 
That  sounded  pleasant  and  homelike.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  what  he  had  got  was  better  than  what  he  had 
relinquished!  If  only — and  the  thought  of  Archie 
gave  her  pause. 

"  Let  us  go  and  find  Aunt  Sarah  and  your  father," 
she  proposed,  abruptly.  "They  must  want  all  they 
can  get  of  you." 

"And  of  you,"  Tom  chimed  in,  rising  at  once. 

As  they  crossed  the  room,  he  did  not  again 
glance  in  Winny's  direction.  He,  at  least,  did  not 
appear  to  be  abnormally  sensitive  to  his  wife's 
charms.  Suddenly,  and  quite  against  her  will,  Kath- 
erine found  herself  feeling  almost  as  sorry  for  him  as 
for  Archie. 

"I  wonder,  oh,  I  wonder,"  she  thought  to  herself, 
while  an  unspeakably  dreary  feeling  settled  upon  her, 
"  I  wonder  how  it  ever  came  about." 

An  hour  later, when  the  children  were  at  their  revels, 
Katherine  playing  jig  after  jig  for  their  dances  and 
games,  Tom  chanced  to  be  sitting  beside  his  grand- 
mother at  one  end  of  the  long  parlor,  whence  she  liked 
to  watch  the  gambols  of  the  little  ones.  Dr.  Mc- 
Lean had  been  resting  since  dinner,  and  when  Arthur 
and  his  nurse  were  sent  home  in  the  carriage  with 
Peter,  Winny  had  pleaded  a  headache  and  gone  with 
them.  She  had  found  Ned  Hollis  almost  too  impres- 


The  Difference  405 

sionable  to  be  interesting,  and  she  did  not  feel  herself 
inspired  by  the  prospect  of  an  interminable  succession 
of  round  games. 

"Is  Winny  subject  to  headaches?"  Grandmother 
Day  was  asking. 

"Apparently,"  Tom  answered,  drily.  "But  I  don't 
imagine  they  are  very  serious." 

Mrs.  Day  did  not  imagine  so  either,  but  husbands 
should  not  be  allowed  to  entertain  unchastened  the- 
ories. 

"Men  never  understand  women's  suffering,"  she 
replied,  with  emphasis,  "because  we  make  so  little 
fuss." 

Tom  raised  his  eyebrows.  "You  may  be  right,"  he 
answered  politely.  "We  are  a  blundering  lot." 

"When  did  you  find  that  out?" 

"  Oh,  some  years  ago,  when  I  came  to  my  growth." 
His  grandmother  gave  him  a  look  that  had  measure- 
ment in  it  and  discernment. 

"Don't  flatter  yourself,  Tom,  that  you  've  come  to 
that  yet,"  she  rejoined,  thinking,  with  a  twinge  of 
compassion,  that  the  poor  fellow  had  not  by  any 
means  seen  the  last  of  his  growing  pains.  And,  as  for 
blundering ; — what  a  gift  he  had  for  it !  Following  out 
this  train  of  thought  to  its  logical  issue : — 

"Tom,"  she  said,  suddenly,  and  so  sharply  that  he 
was  startled  into  acute  attention, — the  uproar  was  at 
its  height,  and  they  were  as  isolated  as  if  they  had 
been  on  a  desert  island, — "Tom,  you  're  not  going  to 
do  anything  so  ill-judged  as  to  take  Winny  to  Rome — 
while  Archie  is  there?" 

"Why,  what  do  you  mean  ? — You  don't  think — " 

"Don't  think  what?" 

"What  do  you  think?"  he  asked,  shortly. 


406  Katherine  Day 

"  I  think  that  it  would  be  in  extremely  bad  taste, — 
to  say  the  least." 

"And — to  say  the  most?"  He  was  sitting  bolt 
upright  in  his  chair  staring  at  his  grandmother  in 
utter  amazement. 

"It  would  be — foolhardy.". 

"I  don't  know  what  you  can  mean  by  that,"  he 
exclaimed.  "They  don't  care  a  fig  for  each  other. 
If  I  had  not  known  that,  do  you  suppose  I  would  have 
— interfered?" 

"What  made  you  think  that  they  didn't  care?" 
the  grandmother  asked. 

"Think  it?  I  knew  it.  They  both  as  good  as  told 
me  that  it  had  been  a  boy-and-girl  affair  and  they 
were  well  out  of  it." 

"And  you  had  never  happened  to  know  that  a  boy- 
and-girl  affair  -was  harder  to  recover  from  than  any- 
thing else?" 

"  I  had  never  thought  anything  about  such  things," 
Tom  answered,  doggedly.  Then,  after  a  moment: — 
"Great  heavens,  Grandmother!"  he  cried,  with  grow- 
ing uneasiness.  "You  don't  suppose  anybody  be- 
lieved that  I — that  I  played  the  traitor? " 

As  the  black  word  left  his  lips  Tom's  face  testified 
to  the  recoil  of  his  spirit.  He  had  clutched  the  arm  of 
his  chair,  and  Mrs.  Day  placed  her  hand  on  his  in 
quick  pity  of  him. 

"That  's  too  hard  a  word,"  she  said,  gently. 

"No  word  would  be  too  hard  for  the  thing,"  he 
declared. 

They  sat  silent  for  some  minutes,  the  long,  thin 
hand  of  age  lying  lightly  upon  the  hard  young  knuck- 
les, till  presently  Tom  released  his  hold  upon  the  ma- 
hogany rest,  and  the  kindly  hand  was  withdrawn. 


The  Difference  407 

"Grandmother,"  he  asked,  at  last,  with  a  visible 
effort;  "do  you  think, — do  you  think  that — Kath- 
erine  thought  that?" 

The  question  was  secretly  gratifying  to  Mrs.  Day, 
who  recognized  the  unconscious  tribute  of  that  in- 
stant reference  to  Katherine's  judgment.  It  was 
well  that  Katherine  should  get  her  dues,  even  at  this 
late  day.  Yet  the  grandmother  hardened  a  little  with 
the  old  resentment  toward  Tom, — poor,  blundering 
fellow ! — and  she  replied  with  much  dignity : — "  I  can  't 
tell  you  what  Katherine  thought.  It  is  a  subject 
which  we  have  never  discussed." 

"She  must  have  thought — something,  if  only  be- 
cause of  Archie.  Do  you  think  she  thought  he 
cared  ? ' ' 

"Everybody  thought  he  cared.  You  would  have 
thought  so  yourself  if  you  had  had  your  senses  about 
you." 

Tom  had  sunk  back  in  his  chair  again. 

"Good  God!  Why  did  n't  somebody  tell  me!"  he 
muttered, — yet  not  so  low  but  that  the  still  acute 
hearing  of  the  old  woman  had  caught  the  words. 

"And  that  would  have  made  a  difference?" 

Again  Tom  turned  sharp  about  and  faced  his  grand- 
mother. The  children  were  romping  wildly  to  the 
tune  of  Katherine's  rapid  fingers.  How  those  fingers 
were  dancing  over  the  keys!  How  cruelly  gay  it  all 
was — the  rollicking  measure  of  the  tune,  the  peals  of 
childish  laughter,  the  smiling  sympathy  of  the  elders, 
happy  fathers  and  mothers  looking  on  in  mutual  joy 
and  sympathy !  Only  Winny  had  gone  of  all  that  com- 
pany, Winny  and  the  boy, — her  boy,  whom  she  had 
the  first  right  to.  A  fierce  rebellion  seized  Tom  at  this 
right  of  Winny 's  in  the  boy;  ah! — there  it  was 


408  Katherine  Day 

that  his  distrust  of  her  got  the  better  of  his  indif- 
ference. 

Tom  had  no  confidants ;  however  he  might  chafe  at 
having  been  outdone  by  Katherine  in  consistency  of 
purpose,  the  admission  of  regret  would  go  no  further. 
But  that  little  question,  half  sceptical,  half  challeng- 
ing?— "And  that  would  have  made  a  difference?" 

Looking  straight  into  the  eyes  of  this  redoubtable 
judge, — baring  his  soul,  as  it  were,  obedient  to  the 
imperative  need  of  confession, — he  said,  grimly,  but 
without  the  least  touch  of  melodrama:  —  "It 
.would  have  made  just  the  difference  between  heaven 
and  hell!" 


CHAPTER  IV 

FELLOW  PRISONERS 

"  I  cannot  feed  on  beauty  for  the  sake 
Of  beauty  only;   nor  can  drink  in  balm 
From  lovely  objects  for  their  loveliness." 

"  ¥  ALWAYS  knew  I  should  n't  like  being  married 
1     half  as  well  as  I  liked  being  engaged," — and 
Winny  drew  a  small  regretful  sigh  which  Katherine  did 
not  find  herself  taking  very  seriously. 

The  latter  had  been  watching  little  Arthur  as  he  sat 
on  the  floor  in  a  streak  of  sunshine,  crowing  and  cooing 
over  his  blocks;  and  now  she  turned  toward  his 
mother,  with  a  view  to  making  a  suitable  reply.  But, 
really,  she  thought — with  a  prompt  revival  of  her  old 
susceptibility  to  her  quondam  playmate's  personal 
charm, — the  tongue  might  well  afford  to  rest,  in  favor 
of  the  eyes ! 

Winny,  clad  all  in  dove-color,  with  a  touch  of 
creamy  lace  at  the  throat,  was  leaning  among  the  cush- 
ions of  a  deep  red  velvet  chair,  the  soft  outline  of  the 
head  delicately  enunciated  against  the  warm  back- 
ground. Every  detail  of  the  picture  was  complete : 
—the  unstudied  grace  of  the  hair-dressing,  the  momen- 
tary languor  of  the  eyes,  the  careful  cut  of  the  long, 
flowing  morning-gown,  which  lent  a  dovelike  charac- 
ter of  line  as  well  as  hue  to  the  slender  form. 


4io  Katherine  Day 

Winny  indeed  was  not  one  of  those  who  neglect 
themselves  when  the  cares  of  life  begin ;  in  all  practical 
things,  at  least,  she  appeared  quite  equal  to  coping 
with  the  situation  which  she  professed  to  deprecate. 
Her  parlor  was  as  tasteful  and  as  well  ordered  as  her 
toilet ;  her  little  white-becapped  maid  as  decorous  as 
an  accomplished  butler.  In  the  speech  of  the  young 
mistress,  too,  was  a  certain  decision  both  of  accent  and 
phrase  which  left  no  doubt  of  competency — within 
limits. 

"All  the  same,"  she  went  on,  "a  girl  can  't  be 
engaged  forever,  and  of  course  one  would  hate  to  be  an 
old  maid.  Are  you  never  afraid  of  that,  Katherine? " 

"  Why  no! "  Katherine  laughed.  "  I  can't  say  that 
I  am  particularly  apprehensive.  I  think  my  nerves 
would  bear  the  strain!" 

"  I  suppose  there  would  always  be  somebody  you 
could  marry  if  you  wanted  to,"  and  Winny  cast  a 
glance  of  critical  approval  upon  her  visitor.  Kath- 
erine was  certainly  very  effective — partly  because  she 
dressed  so  well. 

"Yes,  I  fancy  there  would  always  be  somebody,  if 
one  were  bent  upon  just  that! "  was  the  rejoinder. 

"Well,"  Winny  continued,  dismissing  Katherine 's 
case,  and  returning  to  the  consideration  of  her  own, 
"there  are  two  sides  to  the  question,  of  course.  And 
I  'm  ready  to  admit  that  the  fault  is  partly  in  me — in 
the  way  I  am  made.  I  always  try  not  to  be  prejudiced, 
and  I  understand  these  things  better  than  I  used  to. 
It  's  only  that  men  are  too  selfish  to  suit  me.  I 
thought,  at  first," — she  was  still  leaning  back  in  her 
chair,  the  gravity  of  her  subject  not  permitted  to 
mar  the  lightness  and  grace  of  her  attitude;  "I 
thought  at  first  that  Tom  was  worse  than  others;  but 


Fellow   Prisoners  41 1 

I  have  seen  a  great  deal  of  life  the  past  two 
years, — nearly  all  of  my  friends  in  the  city  are 
married  women;  they  interest  me  more, — and  I  've 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  husbands  are  all  a  good 
deal  alike.  The  only  really  happy  time  for  a  girl  is 
being  engaged." 

"And  even  the  boy  does  n't  make  you  feel  differ- 
ently?" 

"Oh,  of  course,  he  's  an  amelioration,  and  I  love 
him  to  distraction!" — such  an  unimpassioned  dis- 
traction it  would  seem  to  be! — "I  think  too,  the 
influence  has  been  good  for  Tom.  He  's  not  nearly  so 
exacting  as  he  used  to  be.  He  was  always  a  person 
of  one  idea,  you  know." 

"Papa,"  the  child  murmured,  dreamily.  He  had 
made  his  way  over  to  Katherine,  and  was  leaning  his 
little  head  against  her,  apparently  lost  in  contempla- 
tion. Nap-time  was  drawing  near,  and  the  morning 
had  been  one  of  strenuous  activity. 

"  It  seems  almost  as  if  he  must  understand  what  we 
are  saying,"  Katherine  exclaimed,  quite  abashed  at 
the  improbable  suggestion. 

"He  always  says  'papa'  when  he  hears  Tom's 
name,"  Winny  explained.  "As  I  was  saying,"  she 
went  on,  "Tom  is  a  great  deal  less  exacting  than  he 
used  to  be.  He  has  given  up  insisting  that  I  shall 
think  and  feel  precisely  as  he  does  on  every  subject.  I 
suppose  a  man  must  have  something  to  tyrannize 
over,  and  now  that  he  can  make  little  Arthur  do  every- 
thing he  wants,  he  does  n't  seem  to  expect  so  much  of 
me.  It  's  a  great  relief!  All  the  same,"  she  added, — 
the  phrase  was  one  which  Winny  constantly  used  in 
her  definite  little  summings-up — "I  was  delighted 
that  your  grandmother  took  my  part  on  Thanksgiving 


412  Katherine  Day 

day.  Tom  has  quite  agreed  to  go  abroad  for  the 
summer,  only  not  in  time  for  Italy.  It  seems  as  if  I 
never  had  anything  quite  as  I  wanted  it." 

"Where  shall  you  go?  To  England  first?" 

"Yes;  so  Tom  says,  though  I  don't  care  so  much 
about  England.  And  then  we  shall  do  Holland  and 
Switzerland,  and  perhaps  the  Italian  Lakes.  But 
what  I  really  look  forward  to  is  Paris.  Only  Tom 
says  Paris  is  stupid  and  expensive,  and  he  would 
rather  not  stay  there  more  than  a  fortnight.  As  if  he 
could  know  anything  about  it  when  he  has  never  been 
there!" 

This  constant  reiteration  of  Tom's  name  on  Winny's 
lips,  not  as  if  he  were  her  first  thought,  but  rather  as  if 
he  were  a  part  of  the  commonplace  of  life  not  to  be 
evaded,  had  the  effect  of  making  him  seem  quite  sor- 
didly domestic.  There  was  a  kind  of  bread-and-butter 
familiarity  about  it  that  was  subtly  derogatory.  So 
much  so,  indeed,  that  it  was  a  relief  when  Winny 
presently  entered  a  formal  complaint  against  him; 
for  in  its  sequence  she  unconsciously  presented  him 
in  a  detached  position. 

"So  foolish  of  Tom,"  she  was  saying,  "to  talk  of 
expense!  One  does  n't  marry  a  rich  man  for  the  sake 
of  economizing." 

There  was  no  use  in  arguing  with  Winny;  all  the 
terms  of  her  proposition  were  too  foreign  to  Katherine 's 
habit  of  thought.  Neither  was  it  possible  to  change 
the  subject.  The  visitor  had  already  tried  it  unsuc- 
cessfully more  than  once.  So  she  only  said,  with 
polite  interest: — "Has  Tom  got  to  be  so  rich  as  all 
that?" 

"Papa  says  so.  He  says  that  New  York  firm  he 
used  to  work  for  is  playing  into  his  hands  all  the  time, 


Fellow  Prisoners  413 

and  that  he  has  twice  made  a  very  big  thing.  I 
don't  see  myself,"  she  added,  "but  that  he  has  been 
doing  exactly  what  poor  Archie  tried  to  do,  when  you 
were  all  so  terribly  down  on  him.  I  always  thought 
everybody  was  so  cruel  to  Archie ! ' ' 

Katherine,  rarely  at  a  loss  for  a  retort,  found  noth- 
ing to  say  in  reply  to  this  astonishing  proposition.  As 
she  sat,  regarding  Winny  across  the  slightly  tousled 
head  of  the  child,  who  still  leaned  at  her  knee,  sleepily 
twisting  and  turning  the  ring  upon  her  finger,  she 
reflected  that  it  was  perhaps  just  as  well  that  Tom  had 
given  up  expecting  his  wife  to  think  and  feel  precisely 
as  he  did  on  every  subject.  Their  point  of  view  was 
hardly  identical! 

"  If  Tom  were  only  reasonable,"  Winny  was  saying, 
"we  might  be  living  in  good  style  by  this  time,  instead 
of  cooped  up  in  an  apartment.  We  might  have  our 
own  horses  and  not  go  trundling  about  in  corner  cabs. 
I  asked  him,  nearly  a  year  ago,  if  he  was  spending  any- 
thing like  his  income,  and  he  was  obliged  to  admit  that 
he  was  not.  In  fact,  he  as  good  as  told  me  that  he 
never  intended  spending  his  income.  I  asked  him 
what  he  wanted  to  save  his  money  for,  and  he  said  he 
was  not  saving  it,  he  was  using  it ;  — he  was  using  it  for 
its  own  increase.  Of  course  I  could  n't  but  approve  of 
that,  for  papa  says  that  's  the  only  way  to  get  really 
rich.  But,  all  the  same,  I  have  a  feeling  that  there  's 
something  behind  it;  that  Tom  has  schemes  that  he 
does  n't  tell  me  about.  I  'm  sometimes  terribly  afraid 
'he  may  turn  into  a  philanthropist." 

"  And  don't  you  approve  of  philanthropists? "  Kath- 
erine asked,  secretly  rejoicing  that  Tom  did  cling  to 
his  old  ambitions :  that  he  would  have,  at  least,  that 
outlet  of  broader  interest. 


414  Katherine  Day 

"  No,  I  don't.  I  can't  bear  visionary  people,  and — 
I  think  that  charity  should  begin  at  home." 

Katherine  had  picked  the  baby  up  and  he  was 
already  half  asleep  in  her  arms.  But  that  would 
never  do,  for  she  must  get  back  to  her  grandmother's 
by  one  o'clock.  She  had  chosen  the  morning  for  her 
visit.  Was  it  because  she  was  shy  of  meeting  Tom? 
Well,  she  should  never  shrink  from  that  again.  The 
unconscious  exposition  of  Winny's  claim  had  been  too 
matter-of-fact  to  leave  any  margin  for  the  play  of 
the  imagination.  That  muttered  protest  of  the  pup- 
pet on  Thanksgiving  day  had  been  the  mere  episode 
of  a  moment;  she  need  give  herself  no  uneasiness 
about  it.  He  was  clearly  married  —  hand  and  foot! 
Winny  might  fret  a  bit,  or  coquette  with  the  facts; 
the  atmosphere  of  matrimony  pervaded  every  inch  of 
the  little  establishment,  and,  holding  in  solution 
equally,  as  it  did,  Winny's  loveliness  and  Winny's 
childishness,  must  encompass  Tom  like  the  air  he 
breathed. 

Ah,  how  good  it  was  to  get  away,  to  escape,  out  of 
doors!  Katherine  was  to  have  a  canter  with  Roland 
early  in  the  afternoon.  At  the  mere  thought  of  it  her 
spirits  rose.  Well,  freedom  was  a  great  gift!  To  go 
one's  ways,  unmolested;  not  to  be  entangled  in  any 
close  personal  relation !  How  much  that  counted  for, 
after  all! 

And  Tom,  when  he  came  home,  late  that  afternoon, 
was  almost  as  sensible  as  Katherine  had  been  of  the 
oppression  of  circumstance  that  dwelt  within  his  four 
walls. 

He  was  somewhat  later  than  usual,  too  late  for  his 
daily  romp  with  the  boy  who  had  been  resolutely 
carried  off  to  bed  in  his  nurse's  arms,  at  six  o'clock, 


Fellow  Prisoners  415 

amid  rebellious  cries  for  "papa."  Little  Arthur  had 
not  learned  to  bear  his  reverses  with  fortitude;  he 
still  labored  under  the  delusion  that  the  natural  con- 
comitant of  a  desire  is  its  gratification.  But  his 
father,  having  the  advantage  of  greater  experience, 
was  more  submissive.  Consequently,  when  told  that 
the  boy  was  just  dropping  asleep  and  must  not  be  dis- 
turbed, he  did  not  press  the  point. 

Tom  had  learned  certain  lessons  of  life  very  thor- 
oughly, and  he  had,  as  Winny  admitted,  become  far 
less  exacting,  in  trifles,  at  least.  Whether  he  had  also 
become  truly  amenable  in  essential  things,  was,  how- 
ever, less  certain.  Winny  should  go  abroad  if  she 
desired,  but — not  in  time  for  Rome.  Beguiled  by  his 
ready  acquiescence  in  half  her  programme,  she  still 
hoped  to  carry  out  the  whole. 

After  dinner,  when  Tom  was  established  in  his  own 
den, — rather  a  forbidding  depository  of  dingy  books 
and  maps,  of  well-worn  furniture  and  shabby  rep 
hangings,  redolent  of  pipe  smoke, — Winny  joined  him 
there.  It  was  a  thing  that  did  not  often  happen,  for 
Winny  disliked  the  room,  resenting  particularly  its 
shabbiness  and  smokiness;  and  by  that  same  token 
Tom  liked  it  above  everything  else.  It  was  the  one 
spot  in  the  house — the  one  spot  in  the  world ! — where 
he  felt  like  a  bachelor.  There  was  not  an  inkstain  on 
the  big  desk,  not  a  threadbare  inch  of  the  old  furni- 
ture, that  did  not  speak  to  him  affectionately,  com- 
prehendingly,  of  the  good  old  days  when  he  was  his 
own  master.  He  always  spent  an  hour  there  after 
dinner  with  his  paper  and  his  pipe,  safe,  usually,  from 
intrusion. 

He  looked  up  as  Winny  came  in.  She  had  a  bit  of 
fancy-work  in  her  hand,  though  she  had  always 


416  Katherine  Day 

maintained  that  the  green-shaded  drop-light  was  use- 
less for  purposes  of  embroidery. 

"Did  you  want  anything?"  Tom  asked,  dutifully 
rising  from  his  chair.  He  thought  it  a  very  absurd 
ceremony  to  be  gone  through  with,  but  Winny  had 
made  no  secret  of  her  views  on  points  of  etiquette. 

"Nothing  in  particular,"  she  replied,  quietly  estab- 
lishing herself  on  the  other  side  of  the  desk.  "  It  was 
rather  hot  in  the  parlor,  so  I  came  in  to  cool  off. " 

"Shall  I  open  a  window?  I  am  afraid  it  's  pretty 
stuffy  here." 

"  Yes,  it  is  stuffy ;  it  always  is !  But  it  's  always  cold 
too.  No,  don't  open  the  window.  What  's  the  news 
to-night?" 

"There  does  n't  seem  to  be  much." 

"  That  's  what  you  always  say.  I  wonder  what  you 
read  the  papers  for." 

"Oh,  there  are  lots  of  things  that  interest  me,  that 
you  would  n't  care  for." 

"  For  instance?" 

"Well;  politics,  and  money,  and — here  's  an  article 
about  Hampton  Institute.  Would  you  like  to  hear  it  ? " 

"No,  thank  you.  You  had  better  read  it  to  your- 
self. I  sha'n't  stay  long,  anyway." 

"You  might  be  more  interested  than  you  think. 
They  are  doing  a  lot  down  there." 

" I  know;  papa  says  he  saw  your  name  on  the  sub- 
scription list.  It  seemed  to  me  rather  a  pity." 

"  So  it  did  to  me ;  I  hate  subscription  lists,  but  they 
will  do  it  that  way." 

"Oh,  but  if  you  give  the  money,  I  should  think  it 
was  better  to  get  the  credit  of  it." — This  with  a  little 
toss  of  the  head  which  was  an  exhaustive  commentary 
on  charities  in  general. 


Fellow  Prisoners  417 

"Well;  I  should  never  do  anything  anonymously," 
Tom  returned,  already  absorbed  in  the  article.  He 
thought  the  negro  question  a  big  problem,  immensely 
vital  to  the  interests  of  the  country.  He  already  had 
his  eye  on  the  one  man  whose  opinions  on  that  subject 
he  respected.  This  thinker  did  not  get  much  of  a  hear- 
ing in  the  papers,  but  Tom  had  met  him  and  talked  with 
him.  He  should  have  his  chaffce  one  of  these  days, 
whenever  Tom  should  have  got  his  grip  on  a  great 
newspaper.  The  prospect,  to  be  sure,  seemed  some- 
what more  distant  than  it  used,  but  that  was  only  a 
matter  of  perspective.  The  main  thing  was  to  keep 
headed  right.  One  rarely  got  anything  of  value  with- 
out taking  one's  time  about  it.  Tom,  at  least,  had 
never  found  it  profitable  to  be  precipitate.  If  one 
rode  too  hard,  one  was  liable  to  come  a  cropper! 

Rather  a  rubbishy  article  this  that  he  was  reading; 
the  kind  that  sounds  well  and  leaves  no  impression. 
He  must  get  hold  of  Hartwell  again.  Hartwell  was 
the  kind  of  rough  diamond  that  one  could  take  satis- 
faction in.  He  might  be  persuaded  to  come  to  the 
house,  if  only  Winny — but,  no;  she  would  n't! 

Tom  glanced  across  at  his  wife;  her  pretty  head, 
bent  over  her  work,  was  half  in  bright  light,  half  in 
deep  shadow.  A  pity  it  was  that  Tom  was  not 
artistic !  He  might  still  have  prized  those  graces  which 
had  become  as  dust  and  ashes  to  him. 

Winny,  looking  up,  caught  his  eye;  whereupon  she 
remarked,  casually: — "  Katherine  was  here  this  morn- 
ing." 

"Did  she  see  the  boy?" 

"Yes;  he  almost  went  to  sleep  in  her  lap.  It  was 
just  his  nap-time."  Then,  with  a  light,  but  very  tell- 
ing, emphasis:  "I  thought  she  was  a  good  deal 


418  Katherine  Day 

surprised  that  we  were  not  going  to  Rome.  She  knew 
how  I  had  always  set  my  heart  on  it ;  she  remembered 
how  disappointed  I  was  when  that  stupid  Miss  Han- 
cock would  not  take  us  south  of  Florence,  because  she 
was  afraid  of  the  fever." 

"  Did  Katherine  say  she  was  surprised? " 

"Not  in  so  many  words;  but — one  has  one's  intui- 
tions .  I  knew  she  must  feel  it  rather  a  slight  to  Archie. ' ' 

"Did  she  mention  Archie's  name?" 

"I  don't  recollect;  but  you  know  how  touchy  she 
always  is  about  Archie.  You  remember  how  rude  she 
was  to  you  that  time  when  you  turned  him  off  1'! 

"Yes,  I  remember." 

There  was  a  long  pause.     Then: — 

"Don't  you  believe  you  may  think  better  of  it,  Tom? 
I  would  n't  ask  you  to  be  gone  any  longer  time;  we 
could  come  back  earlier,  and  I  've  heard  you  say  that 
the  summer  is  just  as  important  as  any  other  season  on 
the  stock  exchange." 

"I  am  sorry  to  seem  disobliging,  Winny;  but  I 
can't  change  the  dates,  and — I  certainly  should  not 
consent  to  taking  the  boy  to  Rome  late  in  the  season," 
— and  Tom  returned  to  his  paper  in  the  hope  of  mak 
ing  an  end  of  a  subject  which  had,  within  one  short 
week,  become  the  most  painful  of  all  subjects  to  him. 
"It  would  be  in  extremely  bad  taste," — and — "It 
would  be  foolhardy."  He  did  not  want  to  get  morbid 
about  it,  but — Grandmother  Day's  words  were  not  to 
be  lightly  disregarded. 

Winny  said  no  more,  and  presently  Tom  was  aware 
that  she  had  gathered  up  her  work  and  left  the  room ; 
but  he  did  not  imagine  for  a  moment  that  she  had 
yielded  the  point.  She  would  never  gain  it, — that 
could  not  be, — but  she  would  have  her  revenge  in  the 


Fellow  Prisoners  419 

• 

interpretation  she  would  put  upon  his  persistence.  He 
should  know  what  it  was,  even  though  it  did  not  again 
get  itself  expressed  in  words.  Some  things,  articu- 
late once,  require  no  further  speech. 

On  that  occasion,  now  a  year  previous,  when  Winny 
had  so  strenuously  urged  a  fundamental  change  in 
their  scale  of  living,  she  had  openly  bemoaned  her  own 
dowerless  state.  "If  only  I  had  money  of  my  own, 
like  Katherine,"  she  had.  cried;  "I  could  live  as  I 
liked!  It  is  dreadfully  humiliating  to  be  dependent." 

Tom  had  answered  cynically: — "You  should  have 
thought  of  that  before ! — ' '  And  the  next  day  he  had 
brought  her  home  a  new  bangle  as  a  peace  offering. 

They  never  really  quarrelled — these  two  unlucky 
prisoners.  Indeed,  superficially  considered,  they  got 
on  remarkably  well.  There  had  been  no  great  disillu- 
sionment on  the  part  of  either  of  them;  Winny,  at 
least,  had  crossed  the  threshold  of  matrimony  with  a 
very  clear  understanding  of  what  she  was  about.  It 
was  a  prison,  and  the  jailer  was  not  precisely  the  one 
she  should  have  selected  on  his  own  merits;  but  his 
jail  purported  to  be  a  well-appointed,  luxurious  abode 
such  as  she  considered  indispensable  to  her  happiness. 
The  life  did  not  suit  her  any  better  than  she  had  an- 
ticipated, but  she  did  not  mean  to  aggravate  the  situa- 
tion by  unnecessary  antagonisms. 

Tom,  on  the  other  hand,  had  recognized  the  coer- 
cion practiced  upon  his  better  judgment,  and  had 
vigorously  fought  against  it;  but  his  foe  had  been 
unscrupulous,  and  had  outmanoeuvred  him.  Within 
a  very  short  time  after  his  marriage,  he  had  charac- 
terized it  in  his  own  mind,  in  parody  of  the  boy-and- 
girl  affair  it  had  superseded,  as  a  "damn  fool  affair." 
Yet  it  was  not  until  the  moment  of  Winny 's  little 


420  Katherine  Day 

• 

speech  anent  her  own  impecuniosity,  that  he  had  been 
struck  by  that  particular  feature  of  his  folly.  Indeed, 
with  all  his  practical  sense,  with  all  his  appreciation 
of  the  value  of  money,  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  it 
had  never  entered  Tom's  mind  to  attach  the  slightest 
importance  to  the  question  of  private  fortune  in  a 
wife.  If  he  had  desired  to  postpone  such  personal 
bonds  until  his  career  was  assured,  it  had  never  been 
from  any  consideration  of  mere  expense.  -He  had 
thought  only  of  the  conflicting  interests  that  must  be 
called  into  play;  he  had  feared  to  forego  the  single- 
ness of  purpose  which  he  believed  essential  to  success. 
And  so  it  happened  that  Winny's  lack  of  fortune  had 
never  struck  him  as  a  factor  to  be  considered,  until  the 
day  when  she  startled  him  with  a  direct  allusion  to 
Katherine 's  advantage  over  herself. 

Tom  did  his  best  to  forget  the  incident,  for  it  was 
contrary  to  his  deliberate  intention  to  allow  any 
thought  of  Katherine  to  enter  into  his  relation  with 
Winny.  He  knew,  now,  by  the  law  of  contraries,  that 
he  could  have  loved  Katherine.  He  did  not  put  it  to 
himself  in  any  exaggerated  form.  He  could  have 
loved  her;  that  in  itself  meant  freedom,  action,  life, — 
as  again  he  had  learned  by  the  law  of  contraries.  But 
it  would  not  be  safe  to  work  out  that  very  cogent  law 
too  freely,  and,  to  the  end  that  there  might  be  no 
disastrous  conflict,  he  must  hold  the  thought  of  Kath- 
erine as  far  as  possible  removed  from  the  thought  of 
Winny.  In  this  respect  he  had  himself  so  well  in 
hand  that  he  had  succeeded  in  establishing  a  truce 
with  disturbing  fancies,  and  for  a  year  past — that  is, 
since  the  boy  had  begun  to  emerge  from  the  chrysalis 
of  early  infancy — Tom  had  found  life  a  very  tolerable 
undertaking. 


Fellow  Prisoners  421 

It  was  only  his  grandmother's  words  that  had  again 
thrown  him  out  of  gear.  Not  that  they  had  aroused 
any  serious  commotion  in  his  conscience;  he  was  too 
clear  — as  to  his  own  motives  at  least, — to  be  subject 
to  the  views  of  another.  He  knew,  well  enough,  that 
there  had  been  no  disloyalty  of  intention  toward 
Archie;  and,  furthermore,  he  had  far  too  lively  a  real- 
ization of  what  his  cousin  had  escaped  to  feel  any  com- 
punctions toward  him,  even  now  that  his  theory  in 
regard  to  the  latter's  indifference  had  been  called  in 
question.  But  it  was  not  pleasant  to  know  that  his 
action  had  been  misjudged,  that  he  stood  before  his 
small  world  attainted  of  treachery. 

He  could  imagine  how  all  those  aunts  and  uncles 
and  cousins  must  regard  him,  how  the  men  he  and 
Archie  both  knew  must  consider  him,  and  he  found 
himself  confronted  with  the  possibilities  of  nightmare. 
Yet,  somehow,  the  horror  did  not  materialize.  He 
appeared  to  be  curiously  callous,  in  every  direction  but 
one.  His  first  spontaneous  outcry: — " Did  Katherine 
think  that?" — expressed, — now,  as  then, — the  very 
pith  and  marrow  of  the  dissatisfaction  that  was  embit- 
tering him  as  nothing  else  had  done.  "  Did  Katherine 
think  that?"  He  did  not  love  Katherine,  he  never 
should,  and  heaven  knew  he  did  not  want  her  to  love 
him!  But  she  must  respect  him;  that  was  something 
he  could  not  forego.  The  mere  thought  of  her  mis- 
prision  was  insupportable. 

The  clock  struck  nine.  His  customary  hour  had 
grown  into  two,  and  he  had  been  thinking  of  Kather- 
ine every  minute.  AndWinny?  What  would  she  say 
to  being  left  alone  a  whole  evening?  After  all,  Winny 
had  her  rights;  he  had  no  business  to  neglect  her. 
Roughly  shaking  off  his  preoccupation,  he  rose  from 


422  Katherine  Day 

his  chair  and  stepped  along  the  passageway  to  the  gay 
little  parlor  that  made  so  pretty  a  setting  for  its  mis- 
tress. She  was  reading  a  novel,  but  he  knew,  when 
she  looked  up,  that  she  had  marked. the  hour. 

"Well,  well!"  he  exclaimed,  as  he  came  in.  "I 
wonder  where  the  time  has  gone.  I  think  I  must  have 
been  dreaming." 

"You  probably  have,"  Winny  answered,  somewhat 
mollified.  "You  do  look  sleepy.". 


CHAPTER  V 

ALL,  OR  NOTHING 

"All  my  days  I  '11  go  the  softlier,  sadlier, 
For  that  dream's  sake." 

AT  first  Katharine  thought  that  Archie  had  changed 
very  little.  When  she  saw  him  springing  down 
the  gangway  of  the  steamer,  on  that  August  morning 
of  his  arrival,  the  curious  shyness  which  had  possessed 
her  while  she  waited  gave  place  to  a  joyful  sense  of  sat- 
isfaction. It  was  the  old  step,  the  old  free  carriage  of 
the  head,  the  old  flashing  smile.  And  the  voice,  when  he 
cried : — "  Why,  Kitkat ! " — sounded  as  natural  as  if  she 
had  heard  it  every  morning  in  the  year.  Paul  was  there, 
and  Uncle  Theodore;  and  Grandmother  Day  would 
be  driving  up  by  the  time  the  custom  house  was  passed. 
Meanwhile,  how  good  it  was  to  see  Archie  making 
friends  with  that  ungenial  looking  inspector  who  had 
clearly  set  his  heart  upon  finding  something  dutiable. 

"Only  a  few  odds  and  ends,  you  see;  nothing  to 
interest  Uncle  Sam.  I  'm  in  his  service,  myself,  by  the 
the  way,"  the  traveller  added,  confidentially.  "Our 
Uncle  does  n't  make  us  a  very  large  allowance  for  jirn- 
cracks ;  perhaps  you  've  noticed  that ! "  And  the  stern 
features  relaxed,  anjl  the  ferret  fingers  seemed  to  lose 
their  scent  and  go  wandering  vaguely  among  collar- 
boxes  and  well  worn  guide-books, 


424  Katharine  Day 

"Been  over  long?"  the  official  condescended  to 
inquire. 

"Three  years  last  June.  Tell  you  what,  it  seems 
good  to  hear  a  bit  of  Yankee  talk!" 

"I  hope  he  's  had  the  foresight  to  bring  you  a  dia- 
mond tiara,  Katherine,"  Uncle  Theodore  chuckled; 
"he  would  n't  have  to  pay  a  copper  on  it." 

And  Paul  remarked: — "That  's  just  the  way  he 
used  to  ravel  out  the  foreign  red-tape  for  them.  We 
never  had  any  trouble  on  a  frontier." 

"Yes,"  Katherine  thought,  with  deep  content;  "he 
has  n't  changed  a  bit." 

But  he  had. 

"He  's  not  so  much  different  as  more  so,"  Aunt 
Fanny  concluded,  when  she  had  sufficiently  recovered 
from  having  her  hand  kissed  to  express  an  opinion. 

"I  'm  not  sure,"  was  Grandmother  Day's  thought- 
ful rejoinder;  "  I  have  n't  made  him  out  yet." 

She  had  a  week  in  which  to  pursue  her  studies,  and 
then  her  visitor  went  off  to  shoot  shore-birds.  He 
said  he  had  a  special  appointment  with  a  family  of 
yellow-legs  whose  grandparents  were  former  clients  of 
his  and  he  did  not  like  to  go  back  on  his  word. 

Meantime,  there  had  been  that  one  delightful  week 
during  which  the  favorite  grandson  had  pervaded  the 
house  like  a  strain  of  gallant  music,  gay  and  graceful, 
and  sometimes  tender,  as  he  had  never  been  in  the  old 
days.  Especially  with  Katherine  he  was  unwontedly 
affectionate.  It  seemed  now,  in  thinking  of  the  past, 
as  if  even  he  had  perhaps  not  been  wholly  free  from  the 
New  England  limitation.  He  had  always  seemed  ex- 
pressive, to  be  sure;  but,  had  notihe  old  easy  demon- 
strativeness  been  a  form  of  that  same  reserve  that  may 
find  its  account  as  well  in  a  smile  as  in  a  frown?  There 


All,  or  Nothing  425 

were  days  in  that  one  week,  the  only  real  week  of  the 
visit  vouchsafed  her,  when  it  seemed  to  Katherine 
that  Archie  loved  her  and  clung  to  her  as  he  had  never 
done  before.  He  would  follow  her  about  the  garden, 
he  would  ride  with  her,  as  he  had  used  not  to  care  to  do, 
he  would  get  her  to  play  to  him  by  the  hour;  and  he 
was  never  tired  of  hearing  about  her  work.  He 
wanted  to  know  just  the  sort  of  cases  she  had  had, 
just  the  kind  of  people  she  had  been  good  to,  and  what 
came  of  them  afterward.  He  seemed  solicitous  too, 
for  her  future;  he  did  n't  want  her  to  give  her  life  to 
that  sort  of  thing. 

"You  had  to  have  your  fling,  of  course;  I  under- 
stand that,"  he  said  one  evening,  when  they  were 
strolling  together  in  the  moonlit  garden.  "  But  sooner 
or  later  you  're  bound  to  tire  of  it.  You  were  never 
made  for  promiscuous  good  works !  You  want  some- 
thing of  your  own." 

"If  only  you  wanted  me,"  she  had  answered,  quick- 
ly, "you  would  see  how  soon  I  would  throw  over  my 
good  works!" 

"Oh,  no;  don't  save  up  for  that!  I  Ve  been  a  free 
lance  too  long;  I  shouldn't  take  to  anything  else." 
Whereupon,  he  left  her  side,  abruptly,  and,  stepping 
across  one  of  the  box-bordered  flower-beds,  he  proceed- 
ed to  shake  an  old  sickle-pear  tree,  standing  solemn 
and  shadowy  in  the  moonlight.  A  single  hard,  green 
ball  dropped  to  the  ground  and  Archie  picked  it  up. 

"Remember  how  we  used  to  shake  the  old  fellow, 
and  how  tickled  we  were  if  one  of  those  small  paving- 
stones  tumbled  off? "  he  asked,  knocking  his  teeth  on 
the  stony  surface. 

"  Yes ;  and  how  sour  they  were,  and  how  we  thought 
we  enjoyed  them!" 


426  ICatherme  Day 

"They  made  me  sick  one  day  and  I  would  n't  eat 
another  all  that  year,  even  when  they  got  ripe.  Kath- 
erine,"  he  cried,  with  a  sudden  earnestness  of  convic- 
tion, while  the  moonlight  shone  full  in  his  face, 
defiantly  lifted,  "that's  just  what  ails  life.  You  try 
the  green  fruit  and  it  turns  your  stomach,  and  then 
you  don't  care  for  the  ripe." 

"But  that  is  only  for  one  year,"  she  interposed, 
hastily. 

"True; — and  the  other  's  for  only  one  life.  I  wish 
there  were  nightingales  here,"  he  went  on,  without 
giving  her  time  to  answer ;  "  or  whippoorwills, or  some- 
thing to  make  a  noise.  It  's  so' still,  it  seems  as  if  the 
trees  would  hear  what  you  say." 

"  But  they  won't  tell,"  she  laughed,  as  they  pursued 
their  walk. 

"Not  much  to  tell  either,"  he  admitted. 

Nor  was  there  much  to  tell,  after  all  their  confi- 
dences. Once  in  a  very  great  while  there  would  be  a 
flash  of  self-betrayal,  a  touch  of  bitterness,  a  hint  of 
something  else, — of  something  foreign  and  disquiet- 
ing. But,  when  all  was  told,  it  seemed  to  Katherine 
that  in  spite  of  these  flash-light  revelations,  in  spite  of 
his  outspoken  pleasure  in  her  society,  Archie  was  more 
than  ever  a  stranger  to  her.  It  was  only  when  he 
talked  of  Paul  that  they  seemed  to  be  on  firm  familiar 
ground.  Yes,  Paul  was  the  best  fellow  he  knew  any- 
thing about.  He  had  such  a  lot  of  sense  too ;  he  never 
interfered.  Yet  he  kept  things  right  side  up  every  time. 

"  He  '11  always  come  next  to  you.  Katherine,  in  my 
alleged  heart,"  Archie  declared  one  day  when  Paul  had 
just  left  the  house,  after  dining  with  them;  and  then, 
with  unusual  seriousness; — "I  wish — I  do  wish  you 
could  fancy  him!" 


All,  or  Nothing  427 

"I  wish  I  could,"  Katherine  replied,  with  answer- 
ing fervor. 

It  was  the  first  time  in  all  those  years  that  the 
brother  and  sister  had  ever  alluded  to  Paul  in  this 
connection.  Archie  had  been  big  brother  enough  to 
tease  her  about  other  men,  but  he  had  never  ventured 
to  speak  in  that  way  of  Paul ;  he  was  perhaps  afraid 
of  damaging  his  friend's  cause.  Nor  was  anything 
further  said  on  that  occasion.  But  Katherine 's  reply 
had  made  him  hopeful ;  so  much  so,  that  he  told  Paul 
about  it  just  before  he  went  on  his  shooting  trip,  and 
he  could  not  understand  Paul's  lack  of  enthusiasm. 

"  I  knew  she  felt  that  way,"  Paul  said,  quietly. 

"  Have  you  talked  with  her  about  it,  since  you  got 
back?'-' 

"No." 

"Then  you  don't  know  where  you  are.  Katherine 
does  n't  wear  her  heart  on  her  sleeve,  and — look  here, 
Paul!  I  would  n't  be  afraid  of  her,  if  I  were  you;  she 
would  n't  like  a  man  to  be  mousey." 

"And  supposing  she  were  to  show  me  the  door," 
Paul  suggested,  picking  up  his  stethoscope  and  exam- 
ining it  with  grave  interest.  They  were  having  their 
talk  in  the  doctor's  office. 

"  Well, — then  you  'd  be  quit  of  the  whole  thing  and 
could  look  about  you." 

"I  've  not  the  slightest  wish  to  look  about  me," 
Paul  retorted.  "I  like  the  view  I  've  got." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  mean  that  you  would  pick  out  another 
girl; — I  know  better  than  that.  But — perhaps  you 
could  throw  this  thing  off." 

"I  don't  want  to,"  Paul  persisted; — "but  if  you 
like,  I  '11  show  you  something  pretty!" — and  he  in- 
vited his  visitor  to  apply  an  eye  to  the  microscope 


428  Katherine  Day 

which  occupied  a  place  of  honor  among  his  books  and 
retorts.  "That 's  a  bunch  of  those  pernicious  rascals 
that  Koch  has  got  on  the  track  of." 

"Oh,  yes;  I  know,"  Archie  exclaimed;  and  then,  as 
he  lifted  his  head  from  the  glass: — "It  doesn't  take 
much  to  wind  things  up  for  you,  does  it?  Now  I  sup- 
pose one  of  those  little  shavers  is  n't  bigger  than  the 
fraction  of  a  pin  point." 

"Not  more  than  a  millionth  part  as  big,"  was  the 
answer.  "As  you  say,  it  takes  mighty  little  to  upset 
things  for  us." 

Paul  was  wondering  just  what  that  line  meant  that 
had  appeared  in  his  friend's  face  since  they  pa&ted. 
It  was  very  slight, — starting  from  the  sensitive  nostril 
and  losing  itself  in  the  shadow  of  the  light  moustache. 
And  the  eyes,  too, —  they  had  a  way  of  clouding,  sud- 
denly, as  if  they  were  tired  of  their  own  brightness, 
and  would  n't  mind  going  out  for  a  while.  Paul  was 
less  pleased  than  the  others  with  the  impression  that 
Archie  made.  He  thought  he  was  using  himself  up ;  he 
wished  he  knew  in  what  way.  It  was  not  overwork. 

"Don't  get  going  too  fast,"  he  had  said  to  him  one 
day.  They  had  been  talking  of  matters  at  the  Lega- 
tion, and  Paul  had  been  glad  to  learn  that  Archie 
meant  to  hold  on  there  in  spite  of  a  considerable 
increase  of  income  which  his  capital  had  developed  in 
Tom's  hands. 

"Tom  has  been  regularly  fine  all  through  the  busi- 
ness," Archie  had  declared.  "He  was  not  bound  to 
anything  beyond  a  clean  six-per-cent.,  and  he  has 
reckoned  things  exactly  as  if  I  had  had  an  interest  in 
the  firm." 

"  I  'm  glad  he  's  blessed  with  a  sense  of  decency  in 
one  direction,"  Paul  had  declared. 


All,  or  Nothing  429 

"Good  Lord,  Paul!  what  are  you  talking  about?" 
Archie  cried.  "Tom  's  straight  enough." 

"Is  that  your  opinion?" 

"Yes;  it  is.  Of  course  I  know  what  you  mean, — 
and  I  see  you  might  misjudge  him.  But,  I  tell  you, 
you  're  wrong!  He — he  only  blundered.  Those  posi- 
tive chaps  are  liable  to  that." 

"Glad  to  hear  it,"  Paul  replied,  quietly,  but  in  per- 
fect good  faith.  "And  I  'm  glad  all  this  does  n't  make 
you  feel  you  want  to  throw  the  job  up;  for  I  think  it 
is  a  good  job  and  may  lead  to  something  better." 

"Oh,  well,"  Archie  answered,  indifferently;  "I 
might  as  well  be  humoring  old  Dixon  as  killing  time 
with  snap-shots.  It  's  rather  a  jolly  kind  of  life,  too." 

"  I  know  it;  I  can  imagine  just  the  kind  of  life  it  is, 
and  of  course  you  have  things  in  your  own  hands,  a 
good  deal.  Only — don't  get  going  too  fast." 

"Why  not?"  Archie  inquired. 

"Because  it  doesn't  pay." 

"  What  does  pay  ?" 

"Several  things,"  Paul  answered.  "Bacteriology, 
for  one  thing,  and — keeping  a  level  head,  for  another." 

Archie  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  I  catch  on,"  he  replied.  "  But — I  'm  not  as  much 
in  need  of  a  nurse  as  I  was  a  year  or  two  ago.  Though 
I  don't  forget,"  he  added,  with  one  of  his  sudden, 
and  most  beguiling,  changes  of  mood,  "I  don't  forget 
who  it  was  that  kept  me  steady  on  my  pins  when  I 
was — learning  to  walk!" 

When  Archie  had  been  at  home  a  week,  he  werit  into 
town  with  his  sister  to  have  a  look  at  her  lodgings.  It 
was  part  of  his  new  interest  in  everything  that  con- 
cerned her. 

"Snug  little  place;  is  n't  it?"  he  remarked.     "And 


430  Katharine  Day 

you  've  got  some  trees  in  the  square  there.  Quiet  a 
bit  of  sky,  too,  for  star-gazing.  Are  you  at  it  as 
much  as  you  used  to  be?" 

" Oh,  yes;  I  like  to  keep  an  eye  on  them  still." 

Archie  poked  about  in  both  rooms,  interested  in 
every  detail,  until  presently  he  came  upon  a  photo- 
graph of  little  Arthur  that  Winny  had  sent  Katherine 
just  before  sailing.  He  picked  it  up  and  examined  it 
closely,  without  asking  any  questions.  But,  as  he  set 
it  down: — "I  suppose  that  's  Tom's  kid,"  he  opined, 
casually.  And  the  next  day  he  remembered  his  ap- 
pointment with  the  shore-birds. 

After  he  was  gone,  life  seemed  to  Katherine  very 
flat  and  empty.  Archie's  leave  of  absence  was  short, 
and  she  felt  pretty  sure  that  the  yellow-legs  and 
plover  would  get  a  good  share  of  the  ten  days  remain- 
ing. In  the  uncertain  interim  she  did  not  return  to 
her  work  in  the  city.  She  contented  herself  with  a 
few  odd  hours  of  nursing  in  the  family  of  Peter's 
daughter,  where  an  epidemic  of  influenza  had  broken 
out.  Peter  did  not  approve  of  his  young  lady  "de- 
meaning "  herself  in  such  a  way,  but  he  found  her 
less  tractable  than  when  she  was  wont  to  be  among 
the  flower-beds. 

"  Peter,"  she  said  to  him  one  morning,  when  he  had 
stoutly  refused  to  report  upon  the  family, — maintain- 
ing that  Miss  Katherine  was  not  to  bother  her  head 
about  them; — "Peter,  I  have  minded  you  all  my  life, 
because  you  knew  just  how  far  in  to  stick  the  flower- 
seeds.'  But  nursing  is  what  I  know  about,  and  you 
may  as  well  give  in!" 

Peter's  daughter  was,  happily,  more  appreciative, 
and  the  grandchildren  tyrannized  over  Katherine 
quite  as  if  their  social  positions  had  been  reversed. 


All,  or  Nothing  431 

But  even  so  there  was  a  blank  in  her  days,  and  in  her 
thoughts,  that  did  not  get  filled. 

She  pondered  a  good  deal  upon  Archie,  wishing  that 
she  had  had  the  forethought  to  hide  little  Arthur  away. 
"  It  was  so  different  from  seeing  the  child  himself,"  she 
reflected.  "If  Archie  could  do  that,  he  would  feel 
that  it  somehow  made  things  right — just  as  I  do." 
She  wished  she  might  know  that  Archie  was  as  heart- 
whole  as  she.  "  If  only  he  could  see  them  in  their  own 
home,"  she  said  to  herself,  over  and  over  again;  "it 
would  be  like  passing  a  sponge  over  the  slate.  Any 
lingering  regrets  would  be  wiped  out." 

Yes,  she  thought  of  Archie  pretty  much  all  the 
time — of  Archie's  future  and  of  Archie's  past.  And 
so  closely  allied  to  the  thought  of  that  past  was  the 
thought  of  Paul,  that  when,  one  evening,  he  came  to 
see  her,  he  met  with  a  quite  distractingly  cordial 
welcome. 

She  was  playing  the  piano  when  he  came  in,  and 
Paul  asked  her  to  go  on.  He  did  not  care  for  music, 
nor  had  he  ever  pretended  to  do  so;  which,  considering 
the  circumstances  of  the  case,  was  rather  remark- 
able. But  he  could  think  of  no  better  way  of  fore- 
stalling any  suggestion  of  an  adjournment  to  the 
library,  where  he  had  seen  Mrs.  Day  and  her  daughter 
playing  cards.  So: — "  Do  go  on,"  he  begged,  wishing 
devoutly  that  he  knew  whether  it  was  more  likely  to 
be  Beethoven  or  Strauss  that  was  responsible  for  those 
inconsequent  sounds. 

"But  you  don't  like  music,"  Katherine  protested. 
"You  know  you  don't!" 

"Oh,  but  I  like  to  see  you  play!" 

She  laughed  as  she  left  the  piano.  "Perhaps  you 
would  like  just  as  well  to  hear  me  work  Archie's 


43 2  Katharine  Day 

initials,"  she  suggested,  proceeding  to  light  the  drop 
light  and  make  things  cozy. 

"  I  should  like  that  even  better,"  Paul  assented  with 
enthusiasm,  as  he  drew  up  a  second  chair,  blessing  his 
stars,  the  while,  that  fate  had  spared  him  the  music. 

It  was  raining  hard,  and  a  damp,  pungent  smell 
came  in,  as  of  gardens  that  were  getting  their  fill  of  a 
good  thing. 

"Archie  says  you  showed  him  your  microscope  the 
other  day,"  Katherine  remarked,  as  she  picked  up  one 
of  the  pocket  handkerchiefs  that  she  was  embroidering. 
"  It  's  a  long  time  since  you  've  told  me  anything 
about  it." 

"It  's  a  long  time  since  I  Ve  had  the  chance;  we  've 
both  been  so  busy." 

Katherine  had  not  appeared  to  be  at  leisure  for  any 
case  of  Paul's,  and  he  had  again  found  an  opportunity 
for  the  exercise  of  that  acquiescence  which  he  had 
already  had  so  much  practice  in. 

"And  do  you  find  your  microbes  remunerative?" 

"Very!  That  modest  genius  over  in  Prussia  has 
opened  up  a  new  world  for  us.  The  only  difficulty  is, 
—it  's  so  big  that  it  's  easy  to  lose  your  way  in  it." 

"How  lucky  you  are,  to  be  starting  in  just  now, 
when  everything  is  simmering!" 

"Yes;  it  is  an  interesting  moment,  and  it  's  a  great 
thing  to  be  free  to  work.  The  only  trouble  is,  one  is 
tempted  to  keep  at  it  day  and  night,  and  not  bother 
about  practice ;  and  of  course  they  've  got  to  comple- 
ment each  other  to  be  of  any  good." 

"But  you  're  getting  practice?" 

"Oh,  yes;  there  's  no  lack  of  practice  if  one  is  not 
fastidious." 

"You  mean  if  one  is  not  mercenary." 


All,  or  Nothing  433 

"I  mean  if  one  is  not  entirely  impecunious.  I 
don't  suppose  you,  for  instance,  find  yourself  out  of 
employment  very  often!  " 

"No;  but  I  often  wish  you  doctors  would  hurry  up 
your  discoveries,  and  give  us  a  little  more  light.  Tell 
me  what  is  really  being  done.  I  read  all  I  can  get 
hold  of  but  I  sometimes  think  that  I  understand  less 
of  it  than  I  should  if  I  had  not  the  smattering  of 
knowledge  that  a  nurse  gets.  For  instance, — just 
what  do  they  mean  by  infectious  wound  diseases?" 

Now  Paul  was  steeped  in  the  new  science.  He  had 
got  a  smattering  of  it,  as  Katherine  would  have  said, 
in  Vienna,  and  later  in  Paris  where  he  had  had  the  luck 
to  fall  in  with  one  of  the  few  men  who  then  possessed 
an  notion  of  what  Pasteur  was  about.  His  mind  had 
thus  been  well  prepared  for  the  flood  of  new  sugges- 
tion that  had  been  let  loose,  when,  in  the  previous 
March,  the  first  reports  of  Koch's  investigations  had 
found  their  way  into  the  public  press.  He  had 
thrown  himself  into  the  great  movement  with  much 
enthusiasm,  and  in  the  labors  of  investigation  he  had 
found  a  satisfaction  such  as  he  had  not  dreamed  of 
apart  from  the  one  ambition  that  had  been  so  long  and 
persistently  frustrated.  He  did  not  forget  Kath- 
erine in  this  new  and  absorbing  interest,  but  in  a 
broader  and  deeper  sense  he  found  himself.  He  knew 
at  last  that  his  fate  was  not  entirely  in  her  hands; 
that,  though  her  refusal  should  shadow  all  his  days,  yet 
life,  thus  shadowed,  would  still  be  very  much  worth 
while.  He  loved  the  sunshine  and  longed  for  it  as 
much  as  ever,  but — after  all,  he  reflected,  the  un- 
changing north  light  is  very  good  to  work  by.  To- 
night, however,  for  the  first  time,  he  had  a  feeling  that 
the  sun  was  getting  round  to  the  north,  as  it  does  at 


434  Katherine  Day 

the  genial  season,  and  that,  after  all,  it  might  prove 
illuminating,  even  in  a  laboratory. 

"You  are  in  luck,"  she  cried  again.  "Just  think  of 
standing  on  the  very  threshold  of  all  that! " 

"  I  'm  certainly  in  luck  to  have  you  interested  in  it." 

"  How  could  I  help  being?"  she  exclaimed.  "  It  is 
so  intensely  interesting  in  itself, — and  then — your 
going  in  for  it  supplies  the  personal  equation, — if  you 
know  what  that  means !  I  'm  afraid  I  don't !  Anyhow, 
it  makes  it  seem  as  if  the  curtain  had  gone  up  on  a 
perfectly  tremendous  drama,  with  an  actor,  too,  that 
is  real  and  not  just  acting." 

Paul  had  known  that  she  was  grateful,  that  she  had 
esteemed  him  as  Archie's  friend;  but — here  was  no 
question  of  Archie.  She  was  clearly  thinking  of  him 
to-day  without  any  reference  to  her  brother.  Was 
Archie  right?  Was  it  a  mistake  to  be  mousey?  At 
least  he  might  make  his  manners  in  return  for  all  this 
sympathy. 

"  Do  you  know,"  he  declared,  "  I  think  you  're  un- 
commonly kind  to  take  so  much  interest!" — and  he 
ventured  to  let  his  voice  speak  a  bit.  It  had  been 
tutored  out  of  all  expression  of  late  years. 

"Kind?  why,  how  could  I  fail  to  be  interested?" 

"Yes;  but  then  you  say  yourself  that  it  's  not  just 
the  play  you  care  about.  You  let  fall  a  remark  about 
the  actor! —  "  and  as  he  spoke  the  word,  Paul's  heart 
gave  a  tremendous  thump.  It  was  very  disconcerting; 
he  had  thought  he  had  himself  better  in  hand. 

But  things  quieted  down  at  her  first  word,  and  in- 
deed Katherine  herself  felt  that  she  was  only  saying  the 
self-evident  thing,  as  she  answered :  "  But  when  the  ac- 
tor happens  to  be  the  best  friend  of  a  person's  brother?  " 

Paul's  face  fell. 


All,  or  Nothing  435 

"Yes,  I  know,"  he  returned,  quietly,  while  the  old 
resignation  stole  in  quite  soothingly  among  the  agita- 
tions of  the  preceding  moment,  "and  of  course  I  take 
nothing  to  myself." 

"But  indeed  you  may  take  much  to  yourself,"  she 
exclaimed,  with  quick  compunction.  "You  must 
know," — she  hated  the  conventional  phrase  that  was 
forming  on  her  lips, — "you  must  be  aware  of — my 
regard  for  you." 

"Based  largely,  I  am  afraid,"  he  rejoined,  with  a 
sudden  bitterness, — he  had  not  meant  to  let  it  come 
to  that, — "on  the  fact  that  I  have  let  you  alone  for 
several  years;  that  I  have — stopped  prodding." 

"No,"  she  protested,  looking  him  straight  in  the 
face,  eager  to  do  justice  to  herself  and  him.  "It  is 
based  on  better  things  than  that, — not  on  what  you 
have  done — or  left  undone." 

"And  yet?" 

She  was  silent,  while  the  query  echoed  through  the 
empty  places  of  her  heart — and  yet? 

"And  yet,  if  I  were  to  say  the  word  you  hate  to 
hear,  that  dearly  bought  regard  might  fail." 

She  shook  her  head  reflectively,  almost  as  much 
interested  as  he  in  these  speculations. 

"No,"  she  returned;  "it's  not  so  bad  as  that, 
only — if  I  were  you,  I  would  n't  say  it — yet." 

A  flash  of  something  sharper,  intenser  than  joy 
crossed  his  face.  But  Katherine  did  not  see  it.  -She 
had  taken  up  her  work  again,  and  was  stitching  away 
at  Archie's  initials,  thinking  —  not  so  much  of  the 
momentous  little  word  that  had  just  got  itself  spoken, 
as  of  the  curious  fact  that  those  initials  stood  for 
Anno  Domini.  She  had  always  felt  that  coincidence 
to  be  an  augury  of  good  to  Archie. 


436  Katherine  Day 

Paul  had  recovered  his  composure.  There  was, 
after  all,  a  chill,  a  remoteness,  in  that  meagre  con- 
cession, as  he  almost  instantly  perceived.  And  so 
he  was  able  to  say,  with  scarcely  a  deepening  of  the 
voice,  and  with  no  undue  and  alarming  emphasis: 

"I  think  I  understand.  You  mean  that  a  long 
time  from  now,  many  years  perhaps,  you  might  be 
so — disciplined,  so— utterly  changed  from  what  you 
are  to-day," — there  again  he  could  not  quite  sup- 
press a  bitterness  of  phrase, — "that  I  might  risk  a 
word." 

And  Katherine  answered,  quietly,  but  with  an 
intense  effort  to  speak  the  exact  truth,  to  give  Paul 
his  full  dues, — Paul,  who  was  Archie's  friend, — "I 
can  only  say  that — I  wish  it  might  be  so.  But — I 
can't  tell.  It  is  very,  very  far  away." 

And  Paul  perfectly  understood  the  exact  truth, 
better,  I  think,  than  Katherine  did  herself. 

"I  said  you  were  kind,"  he  answered  without 
elation;  "and  I  know  you  are  weighing  every  word 
you  say,  but — don't  let  it  go  any  further,  this  kind- 
ness. Don't  ever  let  it  hasten  things.  I  mean,"  he 
went  on,  leaning  forward  with  his  arm  on  the  table, 
and  searching  her  face,  still  bent  over  her  work, — 
"  I  mean — that  the  kindness  must  never  get  the  upper 
hand  of  the  truth.  You  will  never  be  so  mistaken 
as  to  make  a  sacrifice  for  me.  It  must  be — all,  or 
nothing." 

His  voice  had  taken  on  an  authoritative  tone  and 
she  was  seized  with  a  sudden  panic.  All,  or  nothing! 
Could  it  ever  be  all?  And,  if  not,  what  right  had  she 
to  open  even  that  remote  vista  of  possibility?  She 
did  not  misinterpret  him ;  she  knew  that  it  was  mag- 
nanimity, and  not  selfishness,  that  prompted  his 


All,  or  Nothing  437 

protest,  and  she  knew,  too,  that  under  that  impera- 
tive disclaimer,  lending  it  force  indeed,  was  a  reviv- 
ing hope  which  her  words  had  rashly  awakened. 
For  the  first  time  in  her  life  she  felt  herself  at  a  disad- 
vantage with  Paul. 

"Then  we  had  better  play  I  had  n't  said  it!" — she 
was  trying  to  speak  lightly. 

"Why?    Because  you  did  n't  mean  it?" 

"  Oh,  yes ;  I  meant  it — the  little  bit  I  said.  Only — 
I  had  no  idea  you  were  so  exacting.  It  makes  one 
quite  afraid  of  you!" 

She  certainly  was  at  a  disadvantage  and  Paul  was 
seized  with  an  uneasy  sense  of  it. 

"  Did  you  suppose  that  a  man  who  loved  you  could 
— feel  any  differently?"  he  asked,  with  a  seriousness, 
in  strong  contrast  to  her  pretty  evident  effort  at  the 
reverse.  But  she  did  not  dare  change  her  tone. 

"  I  was  only  thinking,"  she  heard  herself  say,  forced 
by  some  strange  automatic  movement  of  conscience 
to  touch  upon  dangerous  ground;  " I  was  only  think- 
ing what  an  inquisitor  you  used  to  be.  Do  you 
remember,  for  instance,  asking  me,  years  ago — how 
long  ago  it  seems,  and  how  young  we  were! — whether 
there  was — anybody  else?" 

Her  head  was  bent  above  her  needlework,  the  hands 
composedly  dping  their  office.  What  was  it  that 
whispered  to  Paul  that  this  was  a  confession  in  guise 
of  a  jest?  It  was  a  thing  he  had  never  dreamed  of,  yet 
it  was  a  thing  that  confirmed  him  finally  and  utterly 
in  the  chill  scepticism  regarding  that  first  little  word 
of  hope  she  had  ever  given  him.  In  one  of  those 
instantaneous  revulsions  of  feeling  that  sometimes 
revolutionize  a  man's  life,  the  old  hope  of  possession 
transformed  itself  into  an  urgent  need  to  shield  her,  at 


438  Katherine  Day 

all  cost,  even  from  himself.  It  was  not  her  lover,  it 
was  her  knight  that  answered,  in  a  tone  as  light  as  her 
own  had  meant  to  be: 

"Was  I  such  a  sentimental  idiot  as  to  ask  you  that? 
Well, —  you  won't  lay  it  up  against  me,  will  you? 
Because,  you  know — there  would  n't  be  much  chance 
for  any  of  us  if  we  were  called  to  book  for  the  follies  of 
the  past!" 


CHAPTER  VI 

A    VINDICATION 
"Blame  I  can  bear,  though  not  blameworthiness." 

"IT  is  quite  what  I  should  have  expected,"  Grand- 
1  mother  Day  declared,  with  condemnatory  as- 
perity. "She  was  the  very  woman  to  do  it." 

"Really,  mother?" — and  Aunt  Anne's  pretty  face, 
within  its  rose-decked  bonnet,  expressed  an  artless 
surprise.  "Now  I  should  have  thought  she  was  too 
dependent  for  such  a  step.  I  can  't  help  thinking  that 
there  may  be  some  reason  that  we  do  not  understand." 

"Dependent!" — her  mother  repeated,  quite  over- 
looking the  theory  of  revelations  to  come — "What 
ever  made  you  think  Winny  Gerald  dependent?" 

"Well,  several  things.  I  should  have  said  she  was 
one  of  those  women  who  would  do  as  their  men  bid 
them.  Think  how  docile  she  was  when  her  father 
turned  Archie  off." 

"So,  you  thought  that  was  docility?" 

"What  else  could  it  be?  She  certainly  seemed  very 
fond  of  Archie.  I  have  even  sometimes  feared  that  it 
was  docility  that  made  her  marry  Tom.  Her  father 
wanted  it,  I  am  sure." 

Mrs.  Day's  gold-bowed  spectacles  flashed  a  look 
upon  her  daughter  that  was  almost  disdainful. 

"Did  it  ever  occur  to  you,"  she  inquired,  "that 


44°  Katherine  Day 

there  was  any  resemblance  between  Horace  Gerald 
and  that  girl  of  his?" 

"  Why,  no !  she  's  the  image  of  her  mother." 

"Yes;  she  has  her  mother's  features  and  coloring. 
But  did  it  never  occur  to  you  that  she  had  inherited 
anything  from  her  father?" 

"I  can't  say  that  it  ever  did." 

"Well,  my  dear;  Theodore  hasn't  kept  you  in  a 
cabinet  all  your  life  for  nothing,  and — I  don't  know 
that  it  has  hurt  you  either! " — with  a  look  of  pleasant 
relenting  at  the  sweet,  puzzled  face  under  the  pink 
roses.  She  was  very  proud  of  Anne,  of  the  spotless 
spirit  of  her,  no  less  than  of  her  lovely  face.  "  How- 
ever, it  won't  harm  you  to  know  that  Winny  is  just  as 
hard,  and  just  as  sordid,  and  just  as  unscrupulous  as 
Horace  Gerald  himself.  She  obeyed  him  because  she 
wanted  to." 

"Strange,"  Anne  repeated,  "Theodore  seems  to 
have  something  the  same  idea  of  her,  though  he  does 
not  put  it  that  way.  He  was  never  willing  that  I 
should  do  anything  for  her  after  she  and  Tom  settled 
in  town.  I  wanted  to  give  them  a  dinner.  Dear  me ! 
I  'm  afraid  Mrs.  Gerald  must  feel  this  very  much," 
she  went  on  reflectively,  as  her  mind  recurred  to  the 
stumbling,  apologetic  manner  in  which  that  lady  had, 
a  few  minutes  previous,  made  the  announcement 
which  had  created  so  unfavorable  an  impression. 

The  Days  were  old-fashioned  people;  even  Anne, 
who  had  been  subjected  to  the  sophistications  of 
modern  society,  still  clung  to  the  theory  that  wives 
should  abide  -with  their  husbands  and  not  strike  out 
into  foreign  paths.  When,  accordingly,  Winny's 
mother  had  announced,  as  easily  as  she  could, — 
and  just  at  the  end  of  her  call  when  she  was  already 


A  Vindication  441 

on  her  feet  and  retreat  was  near, — that  Winny  had 
decided  to  spend  the  winter  abroad  and  let  Tom  come 
home  without  her,  Anne  had  found  nothing  to  say  in 
reply.  As  Mrs.  Gerald,  however,  missed  the  animus 
of  her  old  neighbor's  comment,  she  felt  that  she  had 
got  through  with  a  ticklish  task  rather  creditably. 

"I  'm  not  surprised  to  hear  it,"  Mrs.  Day  had 
answered,  drily,  thinking,  the  while,  that  Louisa  Ger- 
ald had  a  vacuous  look  which  her  daughter  would 
never  sink  to ;  there  being  nothing  vacuous  about  your 
thorough-going  egoist,  as  this  experienced  observer 
had  long  since  discovered. 

It  was  the  day  after  Archie's  sailing,  and  Katherine 
had  gone  back  to  her  work,  with  a  satisfaction  only 
less  complete  than  Paul  felt  in  the  society  of  his 
precious  microbes.  Yes,  they  were  both  "  in  luck,"  to 
use  Katherine's  phrase, — they  were  both  in  luck  to  be 
living  at  a  time  when  men  were  learning  the  value  of 
work  for  its  own  sake.  A  few  years  earlier,  Paul  might 
have  spent  his  uninspired  days  waiting  for  patients, 
while  Katherine  might  still  have  been  under  the  do- 
minion of  fancy-work  and  small  accomplishments, 
casual  charities,  or  still  more  casual  social  offices. 

She  was  thinking  about  this  one  Saturday  afternoon 
a  week  later,  as  she  walked  across  the  Common  to 
the  Public  Library.  She  was  thinking  what  a  tonic 
it  was,  this  drudgery  which  nursing  usually  resolves 
itself  into — something  very  different,  to  be  sure,  from 
anything  she  had  anticipated  in  the  old  days,  when 
the  Life  of  Sister  Dora  was  firing  her  to  emulation. 
She  had  imagined  herself  relieving  extreme  suffering, 
saving  the  day  in  critical  cases,  soothing  the  last  hours 
of  dying  martyrs.  Yet,  for  the  last  week,  as  often 
enough  in  the  past,  she  had  spent  her  time  passing 


442  Katherine  Day 

from  house  to  house, — dispensing  drugs,  making  gruel, 
changing  bed-linen, — with  nothing  more  exhilarating 
to  reward  her  than  a  quiet  consciousness  that  there 
was  perhaps  a  microscopic  quantity  less  of  misery  and 
dirt  in  this  big  city  because  a  girl  named  Katherine 
Day  was  devoting  her  life  to  its  amelioration.  And, 
meanwhile,  she  had  stopped  worrying  about  her  duty 
to  Paul,  stopped  speculating  about  Tom  and  Winny, 
stopped, — almost  stopped, — grieving  over  Archie's  de- 
parture. Of  Tom  and  Winny,  she  only  knew  that 
they  were  expected  home  about  this  time,  for  she  had 
left  her  grandmother's  house  just  before  Mrs.  Gerald's 
call. 

As  she  entered  the  old  Library,  a  massive  brick 
building  that  has  since  fallen  from  its  first  estate,  she 
came  upon  an  unusual  commotion.  Half  a  dozen 
persons  were  collected  about  a  figure  lying  upon  the 
marble  floor,  evidently  the  victim  of  a  slight  attack 
of  epilepsy.  Katherine  had  never  witnessed  such  a 
thing  before,  but  she  remembered  what  she  had 
learned  about  it.  Even  as  she  crossed  the  broad 
entrance-hall,  the  crowd  had  closed  in  about  the 
sufferer,  concealing  him  from  view,  and,  incidentally, 
shutting  out  the  air.  There  was  clearly  no  one  to 
take  direction.  Katherine  stepped  swiftly  across  the 
hall. 

"Please  move  away;  he  must  have  air."  Her 
voice  was  low,  but  authoritative,  and,  as  the  crowd 
drew  back: — "  Can  you  let  me  have  a  couple  of  coats?" 
she  asked.  "Thank  you!  Now,  will  two  of  you  lift 
him  a  bit,  so  that  I  can  get  the  coats  under  him? 
And  somebody," — she  was  on  her  knees  beside  the 
sufferer, — "will  somebody  please  hold  his  head?" 

No  trained  attendants  at  a  hospital  could  have  been 


A  Vindication  443 

more  swift  to  obey  than  these  men  and  boys  whom 
chance  had  brought  together. 

"No; — no  water,  thank  you,"  she  said,  as  she 
swiftly  loosed  the  man's  tie  and  collar,  and  held  her 
hand  to  the  clammy  forehead.  "No;  thank  you — 
we  don't  need  that," — for  a  woman  had  approached 
with  smelling  salts. — "Just  keep  the  doors  open,  and 
don't  come  too  close.  It  's  passing  already." 

"Why,  Tom!"  she  exclaimed  under  her  breath. 
He  had  been  coming  down  the  stairs,  and  had  reached 
the  spot  in  time  to  obey  her  summons  for  an  assistant. 
Now,  as  she  looked  up  and  found  it  was  he  that  was 
holding  the  man's  head, — holding  his  own  hat,  too, 
between  the  poor  convulsed  face  and  the  group  of 
lookers-on,  who  had  all  crowded  to  one  side, — she 
was  scarcely  surprised  to  see  him  there.  Indeed,  she 
was  too  absorbed  in  the  emergency  to  think  of  any- 
thing else. 

It  was  soon  past  however.  In  a  very  few  minutes 
the  patient  showed  signs  of  returning  consciousness, 
and  there  remained  nothing  to  do  but  to  tie  his  neck- 
tie hurriedly  in  a  loose  knot,  and  to  straighten  his 
disordered  toilet. 

"It  's  all  over,"  she  said,  quietly.  "  You  had  better 
all  go  away.  He  may  not  know  anything  about  it." 

As  the  man  moved  uneasily,  she  dexterously  pulled 
the  borrowed  coats  from  under  him,  and  returned 
them  to  their  owners. 

"When  he  tries  to  get  up,"  she  whispered  to  Tom, 
"just  lend  a  hand,  and  tell  him  he  had  a  fall — if  he 
asks.  It  was  a  very  light  attack,  and  he  may  not 
realize  much  about  it." 

By  the  time  the  man  was  on  his  feet,  a  passing  cab 
had  been  hailed,  but  not  before  a  bright  looking 


444  Katharine  Day 

young  fellow  of  a  reportorial  air  had  come  up  for  in- 
formation. Katherine,  who  stood  at  one  side,  hav- 
ing disengaged  herself  from  the  affair,  saw  him  accost 
Tom,  walking  to  the  door  with  the  invalid,  who  was  still 
somewhat  dazed,  but  quite  clear  as  to  his  identity  and 
domicile.  She  could  not  hear  the  reporter's  question, 
but  Tom's  words  were  quite  audible,  as  he  replied: 

"I  can't  stop  to  talk,  but  if  you  can  find  a  one- 
armed  man  with  black  side  whiskers  in  the  reading- 
room,  he  can  probably  tell  you  all  you  want  to  know. 
I  have  n't  seen  him  go  out." 

A  moment  later,  even  as  the  brisk  form  of  the  re- 
porter disappeared  from  view,  Katherine  heard  the 
bang  of  the  carriage  door,  and  moved  forward  to  meet 
Tom,  just  entering  again. 

"He  knew  his  address?"  she  asked. 

"Oh,  yes;  his  wits  were  quite  disentangled.  I 
know  the  cabbie,  too.  He  '11  be  all  right.  But  you! 
How  neatly  you  handled  that  crowd!  I  should  think 
you  had  had  them  in  training  for  a  month  past!" 

"Oh,  they  just  saw  that  I  understood  about  it,  and 
they  were  glad  to  know  how  to  help.  I  am  only 
thankful  it  was  not  a  severe  attack.  It  would  have 
made  such  a  commotion,  and — that  reporter  might 
not  have  been  so  tractable.  How  did  you  ever  invent 
the  one-armed  man?" 

"Happened  to  see  one  this  morning,  trying  to  do 
something  he  could  n't.  Been  hugging  myself  ever 
since  because  I  had  two !  He  naturally  popped  into 
my  head.  Ah!  there  comes  our  friend  the  reporter." 

"He  doesn't  seem  to  recognize  you,"  Katherine 
remarked,  somewhat  relieved  that  the  man  passed 
without  speaking. 

"Oh,  he  recognized  me  fast  enough,  but  he  knew 


A  Vindication  445 

he  had  been  fooled.  Now,  that  's  not  the  kind  of 
reporter  I  propose  to  have  on  my  paper ! ' ' — and  Tom 
looked  mightily  pleased  with  himself  at  the  thought. 

"How  is  that  coming  on,  by  the  way?"  Katherine 
inquired. 

They  were  standing  near  the  foot  of  the  great 
double  stairway,  where  the  holiday  crowd,  passing  and 
repassing,  brushed  against  them  without  disturbing 
their  talk. 

"Not  very  fast,"  he  answered;  "I  've  learned  a 
thing  or  two  about  the  difficulties  since  I — grew  up! 
Spend  a  good  deal  of  my  leisure  time,  in  fact, 
coaching  myself  on  how  not  to  do  it.  Indeed,  that  's 
about  as  far  as  I  Ve  got!  However,  there  's  time 
enough,  for,  of  course,  it  must  be  years  and  years 
before  I  can  get  the  thing  going." 

"I  suppose  it  will  take  a  very  large  capital,"  Kath- 
erine said. 

"Yes;  a  good  deal  larger  than  I  had  supposed. 
But  it  's  not  only  that.  The  main  thing  is  experience 
and  judgment,  and  I  'm  afraid  that  's  even  more  slow 
to  materialize  than  the  other.  "You  see,"  he  went 
on,  warming  to  his  subject,  "my  idea  of  a  paper  is 
not  one  of  those  scholarly  sheets  that  are  only  read 
by  men  who  think  in  one  particular  way,  but  some- 
thing broad  and  popular,  with  room  in  it  for  airing 
both  sides  of  a  question; — something,  too,  that  will 
have  reach  and  grip  enough  to  tackle  the  big  interna- 
tional complications  that  we  are  bound  to  run  into 
sooner  or  later.  You  would  be  surprised  to  know  how 
many  snags  there  are  in  the  way  of  an  enterprise  like 
that.  I  met  a  man  on  the  steamer — Lansyng,  of  the 
Chicago  Headlight.  He  made  me  feel  like  a  member 
of  the  infant  class!" 


446  Katherine  Day 

"Was  he  interested  in  the  scheme?" 

"  Oh,  I  did  n't  let  on !  We  merely  discussed  the  thing 
on  general  principles.  Fact  is,  I  've  never  told  any- 
body what  I  was  aiming  at — anybody  but  you,  that 
is." 

"And  when  did  you  land?"  Katherine  asked,  with 
a  somewhat  precipitate  change  of  subject  which  her 
companion  promptly  fell  in  with. 

"Last  evening,  in  New  York.  I  took  the  night 
train." 

"How  did  you  ever  persuade  Winny?  She  hates  a 
sleeping-car." 

Tom's  face  changed;  the  animation  that  had  been 
so  becoming  gave  place  to  a  cold  tolerance  which 
Katherine  hated  to  see. 

"  There  did  n't  happen  to  be  any  Winny  to  persuade," 
he  returned,  curtly.  "She  is,  at  present — let  me  see! 
It  must  be  about  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening  over  there. 
— I  should  say  that  unless  she  is  amusing  herself  in  the 
gay  world,  she  is  presumably  in  her  own  small  salon 
at  the  Hotel  de  Castiglione,  her  attention  divided  be- 
tween one  of  Levy's  recent  publications  and  a  box  of 
very  superior  bonbons!" 

"She  didn't  come  back  with  you?  And — " 

"And  the  boy?  He  would  be  dreaming  dreams  in 
the  fluent  French  which  he  is  rapidly  acquiring  from 
a  much  recommended  bonne,  the  purity  of  whose 
accent  I  have  under  suspicion." 

This  loquacity  seemed  a  trifle  forced. 

"But,  Tom!"  Katherine  protested,  casting  about 
for  some  inoffensive  manner  of  getting  assurance  that 
things  were  not  so  wrong  as  they  seemed,  and  ending, 
as  one  is  apt  to  do  after  such  a  casting  about,  rather 
lamely  and  bluntly;  "But,  Tom — why?" 


A  Vindication  447 

The  small  query  was  so  very  eloquent  that  Tom 
became  suddenly  serious.  If  he  was  to  put  a  good 
face  on  a  bad  business  it  was  time  to  begin,  and  cer- 
tainly it  was  essential  that  Katherine,  of  all  others, 
should  take  the  view  he  had  decreed. 

"Well,"  he  answered,  carelessly,  "there  were  vari- 
ous reasons.  Winny  took  the  voyage  rather  hard, 
and  it  seemed  a  pity  to  drag  her  home  again  after  such 
a  short  summer.  She  thinks  too  that  the  boy  will  be 
better  for  an  out-of-door  winter.  Some  people  we 
met — one  of  them  was  a  girl  she  went  to  school  with  at 
Peachgrove  Priory — have  asked  her  to  join  them  on 
the  Riviera  for  three  months.  Rather  pleasant  to 
think  of  the  little  chap  tumbling  about  in  the  sunshine 
all  winter,  instead  of  cooped  up  here  in  the  city.  Not 
such  a  bad  plan,  perhaps." 

But  Katherine,  certain  in  her  own  mind  that  it  was 
the  worst  plan  possible,  equally  certain,  too,  that  Tom 
thought  so  as  well,  could  not  find  it  in  her  heart  to 
express  an  approval  she  did  not  feel.  So  she  took 
refuge  in  a  general  question. 

"Will  Winny  travel  much?"  she  asked;  and  if, 
even  as  she  spoke  the  words,  there  was  a  swift  glancing 
of  the  mind  toward  another  traveller,  still  on  the  high 
seas,  it  was  unpremeditated.  Yet,  because  it  took 
her  at  unawares,  it  found  a  fleeting  reflex, — in  voice 
or  look, — it  would  be  hard  to  say  which. 

Tom,  conversant  of  old  with  his  cousin's  every  vary- 
ing phase  of  countenance,  with  each  changing  inflec- 
tion of  her  voice,  was  more  conscious  than  she  of  the 
turn  her  thought  had  taken.  And,  suddenly,  that 
sense  of  an  old  understanding  restored,  struck  in  him 
the  familiar  note  of  blunt  outspokenness. 

"You  mean  to  Rome?"  he  asked,  as  roughly  as  he 


448  Katherine  Day 

might  have  done  four  years  ago.  "No;  she  will  not 
go  to  Rome.  That  's  in  the  contract." 

"But,  Tom!"  Katherine  protested,  answering  his 
thought  rather  than  his  words;  "I  did  n't  mean 
that!" 

"You  did  n't  know  you  meant  it,  but  you  did." 

"I  don't  know  how  you  should  know  what  I  meant, 
better  than  I  know  myself!"  she  began,  quite  in  the 
old  vein  of  eager  altercation;  but  instantly  she  felt 
the  folly  of  it.  They  were  scarcely  on  that  footing  any 
longer.  She  moved  away,  uneasily.  "I  must  really 
be  going  on  if  I  'm  to  look  up  something  I  came  for," 
she  said. 

"  I  wish  you  would  give  that  up,"  Tom  begged,  but 
also  with  a  somewhat  more  distant  manner.  "There  's 
a  thing  I  've  wanted  to  say  to  you  for  a  year  past,  that 
it  has  never  before  been  possible  to  say.  It  may 
never  be  possible  again.  It  is — quite  important. 
Will  you  let  me  walk  home  with  you?" 

"Why,  of  course,"  she  assented,  wondering  very 
much  what  it  was  that  could  have  come  up  within  the 
year.  It  was  nearly  that  since  they  had  last  met. 

They  crossed  the  hall  and  passed  out  at  the  door. 
It  was  growing  dark,  but  the  lights  in  the  streets  and 
on  the  Common  were  bright  and  numerous.  Tom, 
who  had  taken  matters  into  his  own  hands,  made 
no  motion  to  cross  over  and  enter  the  Common. 
Those  elm-embowered  thoroughfares  were  too  con- 
ventionally appropriate  to  suit  his  mood.  If  he  must 
speak  on  a  critical  subject  to — well — to  Katherine — 
he  preferred  it  should  be  in  t-he  open  street  where  they 
should  be  more  or  less  jostled  by  the  indifferent  foot- 
passenger.  The  evening  was  a  mild  one  and  he  had 
set  the  pace  rather  slow.  Katherine  felt  that  this 


A  Vindication  449 

enterprise  was  his  affair,  not  hers,  and  she  left  matters 
to  his  initiative.  She  had  not  to  wait  long. 

"Last  Thanksgiving  Day,"  he  began,  abruptly, 
"grandmother  said  something  to  me  that — made  quite 
an  impression.  She  as  good  as  told  me  that  I  enjoyed 
the  reputation  of  a — traitor  in  the  family." 

"You  can't  be  putting  it  fairly,"  Katherine  pro- 
tested. "It  's  not  grandmother's  way  to  be —  start- 
ling." 

"  Perhaps  not.  But  it  seems  that  the  general 
view  of  my  conduct  is  essentially — startling." 

"  What  did  grandmother  really  say?  since  you  seem 
to  want  to  tell  me,"  Katherine  asked.  She  was  bra- 
cing herself  for  something  very  difficult  and  she  must 
know  her  ground. 

"She  told  me  I  was  not  to  take  Winny  to  Rome 
while  Archie  was  there,  for  two  reasons;  firstly,  be- 
cause it  would  be  in  extremely  bad  taste,  and, 
secondly,  because  it  would  be — foolhardy.  When  I 
expressed  surprise  at  what  that  implied  she  paid  me 
the  compliment  of  asking  me  whether  a  knowledge  of 
what  she  believes  to  have  been  the  true  state  of  the 
case  would  have  made  a  difference  in  my  action.  One 
gets  one's  share  of  ugly  hours,  but  I  think  that  was  the 
ugliest  I  ever  passed — if  I  can  be  said  to  have  passed 
it,"  he  added,  rather  savagely. 

They  walked  on  for  some  little  distance. 

"Have  you  anything  to  say?"  he  asked,  after  a 
long  pause  in  which  they  had  unconsciously  quickened 
their  pace. — "Because  if  you  have,  I  should  be  glad 
to  hear  it." 

"  I  'm  afraid  I  can't  say  anything  very  comforting," 
she  answered.  "I'm  afraid  everyone  must  have 
thought — ill  of  you." 


450  Katherine  Day 

"You,  among  the  others?" 

Katherine  felt  a  suffocating  sense  of  compulsion 
upon  her. 

"Yes;    I,  among  the  others." 

Again  they  walked  on  in  silence, — Katherine  with 
a  dull,  grinding  pain  at  her  heart  that  seemed  like  the 
dead  and  buried  past  coming  to  life  again. 

Would  anything  I  could  say  make  a  difference  in 
your  opinion?"  he  inquired. 

"I  wish  it  might." 

He  glanced  at  her  face,  so  nearly  on  a  level  with 
his  own.  Its  sadness  was  subtly  reassuring.  She 
thought  ill  of  him,  but — she  was  not  happy  in  it. 

"Unfortunately,"  he  was  saying,  "it  is  a  subject 
which  will  not  bear  amplification.  There  seems,  in 
fact,  nothing  for  me  to  offer  for  your  consideration 
but  a  bald,  unsupported  denial.  I  was  doubtless  an 
incredible  blockhead,  but  I  acted  with  a  perfectly 
clear  conscience  towards  Archie.  Can  you  believe 
me?" 

He  was  intently  watching  the  face  beside  him,  so 
expressive  even  in  profile,  and  he  saw  the  cloud  lighten 
before  she  spoke.  Then  her  eyes  met  his  in  frank 
good  faith,  and  she  said: 

"Yes,  Tom; — I  can't  of  course  understand  it, — it  is 
too  blind  to  me, — but — I  believe  you  with  all  my 
heart.  It  lifts  an  immense  weight  from  my  mind." 

"Thank  you,"  he  replied;    "that  's  all  I  wanted." 

A  few  minutes  later  they  had  arrived  at  their  desti- 
nation. 

"  Do  you  think  grandmother  understands  better 
now? "  Katherine  asked,  pausing  a  moment  at  the  foot 
of  the  steps. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  answered;   "I  'm  afraid  nothing 


A  Vindication  451 

short  of  explanations  would  convince  her,  and — I  can't 
explain.  But  a  man  must  n't  bother  too  much  about 
what  people  think  of  him.  The  main  thing  is,  that 
you  understand." 

With  a  hearty  hand-shake  he  was  gone,  and  Kath- 
erine  was  hurrying  up  the  steps  and  up  the  stairs,  a 
tumult  of  joyful  emotion  in  her  heart.  Of  course  she 
believed  him;  how  could  one  help  it?  Ah,  she  it  was 
who  had  been  the  traitor  to  doubt  him !  What  if  it  was 
a  mystery  ?  What  was  faith  for  ?  What  were  friends  for 
— if  mystery  was  to  baffle  them?  She  had  his  word, 
and  that  was  enough;  something  precious  was  re- 
stored to  her,  something  to  which  she  had  -an  in- 
dubitable right.  She  could  respect  Tom; — oh,  she 
could  respect  him !  And  now,  at  last,  after  all  these 
years,  she  could  respect  herself. 


CHAPTER  VII 

IN    BACHELOR    QUARTERS 

"This  way,  men  are  men, 

No  difference!  best  and  worst  they  love  their  boys 
After  one  fashion." 

LIFE  was  not  without  its  consolations  for  Tom 
that  winter,  and,  if  they  were  of  a  homely 
nature,  they  were  perhaps  for  that  very  reason  the 
better  suited  to  his  needs.  He  was  no  great  stickler 
for  the  amenities  of  life,  either  in  practical  matters 
or  in  matters  of  sentiment,  and  a  return  to  his  old 
bachelor  quarters,  opportunely  vacant,  suited  alike 
the  rustic  simplicity  of  his  personal  tastes,  and  that 
habit  of  independence  which  had  been  so  rudely 
broken  in  upon.  Nor  was  it  from  any  taint  of  miserli- 
ness that  he  elected  to  return  to  his  old  roost  in  the 
top  of  a  dingy  lodging-house.  He  loved  its  dinginess, 
he  loved  its  height  above  the  world,  he  loved  the  very 
stairs  that  led  to  it;  even  as  he  loved  the  labor  that 
was  fast  turning  his  days  into  all  work  and  no  play, 
but  that  led  him  ever  nearer  to  the  goal  he  had  in 
view. 

He  gave  himself  little  time  for  reflection  on  the  past 
or  speculations  on  the  future,  excepting  where  these 
involved  his  old  ambitions  and  his  new  hopes  of  ful- 
filment. The  thought  of  Katherine,  especially,  was 


In  Bachelor  Quarters  453 

rigorously  excluded  from  his  conscious  meditations, 
— an  elimination  which  was  the  easier  now  that  the 
chief  sting  of  that  association  had  been  removed.  If 
he  met  her  on  the  street,  if  he  heard  her  name,  he  was 
aware  of  the  deep  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  all  was 
clear  between  them — that  he  had  succeeded  in 
straightening  out  a  difficult  matter  without  becom- 
ing caught  in  any  serious  emotional  disturbance.  It 
had  been  her  mind,  her  judgment,  that  he  had  ap- 
pealed to;  nothing  else  had  concerned  him.  The 
ardor  with  which  she  had  declared  her  faith  in  him, 
the  feeling  she  had  expressed  and  that  had  so  trans- 
formed and  illumined  her  countenance,  was  not  al- 
lowed to  count  for  anything.  He  all  but  resented 
her  undeniable  loveliness,  the  strong  attractiveness 
of  her  personality.  He  would  not  admit  the  some- 
thing deeper  and  more  vital  still  which  mastered  him 
now  as  it  had  mastered  him  when  he  was  yet  too 
inexperienced — too  headstrong  —  to  know  himself 
subject  to  it.  For  Tom  was  under  bonds  to  believe 
that  he  did  not  love  Katherine;  he  merely  recog- 
nized the  wisdom  of  avoiding  her,  now  and  always.  It 
was  a  great  pity,  he  told  himself,  that  such  precau- 
tions should  be  necessary,  for  he  had  never  found 
anyone  else  to  talk  things  over  with.  But  even  that 
he  would  not  allow  himself  to  hanker  after.  He  had 
his  pipe  and  his  books,  he  had  his  independence,  and 
he  had  success. 

Undoubtedly,  Tom  possessed  the  trick  of  success. 
Only  a  little  past  thirty,  he  was  already,  comparatively 
speaking,  a  rich  man;  not  as  rich  as  he  meant  to  be, 
not  nearly  as  rich  as  he  must  be  before  he  could 
launch  his  great  venture, — but  richer  than  any  other 
self-made  man  of  his  years  whom  he  happened  to 


454  Katharine  Day 

know.  Winny  should  not  again  have  occasion  to  tax 
him  with  penuriousness.  Since  money  could  content 
her,  she  should  have  all  she  asked,  and  there  would 
still  remain  an  ample  margin  for  the  satisfaction  of 
broader  miscellaneous  interests,  pending  the  time 
when  purse  and  judgment  should  alike  be  adequate 
to  the  demands  of  the  one  enterprise  the  postpone- 
ment of  which  did  but  mature  and  strengthen  his 
inflexible  ambition. 

Nor  was  mere  enrichment  all  that  Tom's  success 
signified.  His  achievement  was  of  the  kind  which 
comprises  a  recognized  standing  in  the  business  com- 
munity. He  was  already  considered  available  for 
positions  of  trust, — positions  in  which  the  honor  in- 
volved is  esteemed  an  equivalent  for  ability  of  the 
first  class.  And  this,  to  a  man  of  his  sober  but  very 
definite  ideals,  was  more  intimately  gratifying  than 
financial  success  alone,  however  brilliant. 

Yes;  Tom  had  his  consolations,  and  he  valued 
them  at  their  full  worth.  And  yet? 

One  of  the  wisest  of  men  has  found  it  worth  while 
to  point  out  the  patent  fact  that  Nature  has  been  at 
pains  to  prevent  even  the  tallest  and  most  vigorous 
tree  from  growing  into  the  skies;  and  it  would  seem 
that  equally  rigid  restrictions  have  been  found  advis- 
able in  the  matter  of  human  aspirations.  Tom,  at 
least,  with  all  his  philosophy,  with  all  his  success, 
was  not  yet  master  of  his  fate.  He  could  mould  his 
worldly  fortunes  to  his  liking,  because  he  had  attained 
to  that  power  which  his  early  ambition  had  coveted ; 
he  could  school  himself  to  forego  that  which  would 
have  been  dearer  yet  than  power,  because  he  had  the 
conscience  and  the  will  to  acquiesce  in  the  forfeit  his 
blundering  youth  had  incurred.  But,  when  all  was 


In   Bachelor  Quarters  455 

said,  he  had  given  hostages  to  fortune,  and  in  the 
consequences  of  this  rash  act  was  involved  not  only 
his  duty  but  his  affection. 

His  infatuation  for  Winny,  as  we  know,  had  been 
as  short-lived  as  it  had  been  swift  of  growth ; — it  had 
not  survived  his  perception  of  her  true  character. 
But  Winny  could  not  be  considered  apart  from  little 
Arthur,  and  Tom  loved  his  son  with  the  tenderness 
and  the  tenacity  of  a  deep,  slow  nature.  He  had  not 
been  quick  to  take  the  child  into  the  innermost  sanc- 
tuary of  his  heart — when  had  Tom  ever  been  quick, 
where  his  true  and  better  self  was  in  question?  But 
little  by  little,  day  by  day,  the  ineffable  mystery 
and  grace  of  that  budding  intelligence  had  en- 
thralled his  mind, — the  ineffable  tenderness  of  the 
appeal  which  the  little  child  puts  forth  in  its  weak- 
ness, in  its  unconscious  importunity,  had  stolen  into 
his  heart  of  hearts,  till  it  seemed  sometimes  as  if  his 
very  soul  trembled  under  it,  as  St.  Christopher  once 
trembled  beneath  the  weight  of  a  sovereign  burden. 
And  now  that  the  boy  was  withheld  from  him,  now 
that  he  could  not  know  each  morning  that  all  was  well 
with  him,  that  he  could  not  warm  his  heart  each 
evening  in  the  light  of  that  childish  recognition,  he 
was  aware  that  there  was  something  very  much  amiss. 

Had  it  not  been  for  Arthur,  Tom  would  have  ac- 
cepted with  unflattering  resignation  Winny 's  proposal 
to  remain  abroad;  and  even  as  it  was  he  had  not 
trusted  himself  to  oppose  the  plan  very  strenuously. 
It  would  have  involved  a  discussion  of  things  that 
were  best  left  alone.  For  Arthur's  sake  he  could  not 
afford  to  come  to  close  quarters  with  the  truth.  There 
were  certain  fictions  that  must  be  maintained ,  certain 
decorums  that  must  be  preserved,  since  these  flimsy 


456  Katherine  Day 

artifices  were  the  sole  bond  that  held  between  himself 
and  Arthur's  mother. 

Hence,  when  Winny  divulged  her  little  plan,  and 
when,  in  the  light  of  her  character,  which  he  now 
knew  so  well,  Tom  perceived  that  it  was  in  accordance 
with  her  intention  from  the  beginning,  he  made  but 
a  half-hearted  stand  for  his  rights.  The  child,  he  re- 
flected was  scarcely  more  than  a  baby.  The  experi- 
ment could  hardly  do  a  mischief  to  his  bit  of  a  mind, 
and,  as  for  the  small  body,  it  was  such  an  astonishingly 
perfect  little  machine  that  there  was  not  much  to  fear 
for  that.  In  fact,  Tom  was  inclined  to  take  himself 
severely  to  task  for  making  so  much  of  a  slight  matter. 
He  told  himself  that  he  was  like  a  child  whose  play- 
thing is  to  be  laid  on  the  shelf  over  Sunday;  that  he 
objected  to  the  interruption,  not  from  any  harm  that 
would  come  to  the  toy,  but  because  he  hated  to  stop 
playing.  Wherefore,  he  put  a  good  face  upon  a 
bad  business,  and  came  home  prepared  to  defend 
Winny  against  any  strictures  that  might  be  made 
upon  her  conduct. 

It  was  a  little  disconcerting  to  find  that  no  such 
strictures  were  made.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gerald  clearly 
approved  the  plan.  The  former,  indeed,  took  no 
little  satisfaction  in  announcing  that  his  daughter, 
Mrs.  McLean, — "McLean  the  banker,  you  know," — 
was  wintering  abroad;  while,  as  for  Winny 's  mother, 
since  Mrs.  Day  was  "not  surprised,"  her  last  misgiv- 
ing was  removed,  and  she  could  indulge  herself  in 
visions  of  the  charming  toilets  that  the  child  would 
be  in  a  position  to  acquire. 

"I  hope,  Tom,"  she  had  said,  on  the  single  occasion 
on  which  her  son-in-law  had  called,  "I  hope  that 
you  realize  how  Paris  prices  have  advanced.  Winny 


In  Bachelor  Quarters  457 

has  lovely  taste,  and  it  would  be  a  pity  that  she  should 
not  gratify  it." 

"It  would  indeed,  Mrs.  Gerald,"  Tom  assented 
blandly.  "As  I  have  heard  her  say, — where  would 
be  the  good  of  marrying  a  rich  man  if  you  were  obliged 
to  economize?" 

"  It  is  really  wonderful  how  he  appreciates  Winny," 
Mrs.  Gerald  had  remarked  to  her  husband,  after 
Tom's  departure.  "He  knows  so  thoroughly  what 
is  due  her." 

"If  he  didn't,  she  would  soon  teach  him,"  was 
Horace  Gerald's  blunt  reply.  He  had  never  lost  that 
unquestioning  confidence  in  his  daughter  which  can 
only  exist  between  congenial  minds. 

Nor  did  the  Day  contingent  seem  more  inclined 
than  the  Geralds  to  criticise  Winny's  action.  Grand- 
mother Day  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  tell  Tom  that  she 
was  not  surprised, — she  had  not  lived  close  upon  four- 
score years  without  learning  to  adapt  her  conversa- 
tion to  her  interlocutor, — but  she  said  that  since  Tom 
did  not  object  there  seemed  no  reason  why  anyone 
else  should. 

"Was  it  your  suggestion,  Tom?"  she  had  asked, 
so  casually  that  he  had  almost  wondered  why  it 
should  not  have  been. 

"Why,  no!"  he  had  replied;  "I  should  not  have 
thought  of  it.  But  I  can  see  that  it  will  be  good  for 
the  little  chap  to  tumble  about  in  the  sunshine  at 
Mentone  all  winter,  instead  of  being  cooped  up  here 
in  the  city.  He  's  a  great  fellow  for  that  sort  of 
thing;  he  plays  out  of  doors  all  day,  and  makes 
friends  with  everything  that  grows!  Why,  Grand- 
mother, he  got  the  names  of  the  Alpine  flowers  as  pat 
as  a  dictionary !  I  wish  you  could  hear '  him  say 


458  Katherine  Day 

Edelweiss.  You  would  think  he  was  a  little  Dutch- 
man." 

"And  he  's  picking  up  French,  I  '11  be  bound,"  the 
grandmother  opined,  with  a  movement  of  indulgent 
sympathy  for  the  poor  misguided  fellow  who  had 
made  such  a  mess  of  things  all  round,  yet  was  so  lov- 
able after  all.  She  had  never  found  Tom  particularly 
lovable  in  the  old  days  when  he  was  always  coming 
to  the  house,  and  giving  his  opinion  unsolicited.  He 
was  a  good  deal  chastened  since  then, — she  could  see 
that;  yet  he  had  never  seemed  half  so  manly  as  he 
did  now,  when  he  was  acquiescing  so  philosophically 
in  the  defection  of  that  miserable  little  minx  who 
was  stealing  away  from  him  a  whole  year  of  his  boy's 
life.  Perhaps  after  all  Katherine  had  understood 
better  than  her  grandmother  how  to  value  him.  The 
young  have  their  intuitions, — convenient  appliances 
that  get  dulled  with  age.  Only  a  pity  that  Tom  had 
been  denied  his  share! 

"Oh,  yes!  He  jabbers  French  like  everything," 
Tom  was  saying.  "  Talks  right  over  my  head  half  the 
time  already.  Luckily,  there  are  one  or  two  pretty 
important  words  that  are  the  same  in  all  tongues. 
For  instance,  when  he  says  'papa,'  you  wouldn't 
know  whether  he  was  speaking  French  or  English." 

"Then  he  won't  unlearn  that,"  Grandmother  Day 
surmised,  with  a  sudden  movement  of  tender  remi- 
niscence. She  was  thinking  of  her  own  young  hus- 
band's riotous  joy  the  first  time  their  boy,  their  little 
Charles,  had  said  that  pretty  word  that  seems  born 
anew  on  every  baby  lip,  as  if  it  had  sprung  there 
untaught. 

If,  however,  Grandmother  Day  was  feeling  the 
pressure  of  advancing  years,  it  was  manifest  rather 


In   Bachelor  Quarters  459 

in  a  softening  of  the  heart  than  a  dimming  of  the  in- 
telligence. She  was  growing  gentler,  more  sym- 
pathetic, as  Aunt  Fanny  would  have  testified  with 
grateful  wonder.  Indeed  there  had  never  been  a 
time  when  Fanny's  mother  was  so  willing  to  talk  of 
George,  to  admit  the  magnitude  of  that  loss  to  a 
woman  who  had  no  children  for  her  consolation.  Yet 
the  old  lady  was  by  no  means  changing  her  nature. 
She  was  still  alert,  cheerful,  philosophical,  and  often 
quite  alarmingly  penetrating. 

One  day,  when  Katherine  was  paying  her  a  visit, 
Paul  Stuyvesant  came  out  to  call,  and  stayed  to  din- 
ner. He  was  in  a  talkative  vein,  and  Mrs.  Day,  with 
whom  he  had  always  been  a  favorite,  made  no  secret 
of  her  pleasure  in  his  conversation.  What  was  Kath- 
erine's  surprise,  then,  when  they  were  out  sleighing 
the  next  morning,  to  hear  her  grandmother  ask, 
abruptly : 

"Have  you  refused  him,  Katherine?" 

"Refused  him?"  Katherine  repeated,  while  her 
eyes,  in  avoidance  of  those  sharp  black  ones,  fixed 
themselves  upon  the  ramrod  back  of  the  old  coach- 
man. 

"Not  Peter!"  was  the  satirical  rejoinder.  "Have 
you  refused  Paul  Stuyvesant?" 

"Why,  no!     That  is—" 

"That  is?" 

"That  is — not  lately;  not  since  ages  ago  when  we 
were  boy  and  girl." 

"I  thought  it  must  have  been  more  recent,"  Mrs. 
Day  observed,  drily;  "because  he  has  improved  so 
much." 

Katherine  laughed  outright  at  this  unexpected  sally. 

"Is  it  such  an  improving  experience?"  she  asked, 


460  Katharine   Day 

with  an  appreciative  glance  over  her  shoulder  at  the 
vigorous  figure  clad  in  immemorial  zibeline.  She 
was  thinking  how  well  her  grandmother's  face  and 
speech  fell  in  with  the  sparkling  winter  landscape 
and  the  gay  sleigh-bells.  The  old  lady's  color  was 
responding  bravely  to  the  sting  of  the  frosty  atmos- 
phere; her  hair,  still  as  black  as  the  keen  old  eyes,  had 
lost  none  of  its  lustre,  while  a  flash  of  sound  white 
teeth  still  further  heightened  the  incisiveness  of  the 
picture,  as  the  lips  parted  in  enunciation  of  the  clear- 
cut  axiom : 

"It  's  always  improving  to  a  man  to  get  on  his  own 
feet, — especially  when  he  has  been  at  a  girl's  beck 
and  call  for  years!" 

"  Well,  it  must  be  something  else  that  has  improved 
Paul,"  Katherine  declared.  "It  's  not  that." 

"I  'm  not  so  sure.  Of  course  I  don't  doubt  your 
word,  and  whatever  you  've  done  it  has  evidently 
been  unintentional  on  your  part.  But — he  has  given 
you  up." 

"Oh,  Grandmother!     If  I  could  only  think  so!" 

It  seemed  to  Katherine  as  if  there  were  already 
the  easing,  if  not  yet  the  lifting  of  a  great  weight  from 
her  mind.  What  a  strain  it  had  been,  this  effort  to 
force  her  feeling!  And  how  absurd  and  artificial 
her  attitude  suddenly  appeared  in  the  light  of  her 
grandmother's  clear  good  sense! 

"So.  you  've  been  trying  to  come  to  it,"  the  old 
lady  rejoined,  composedly,  "and  he  has  found  you 
out.  He  won't  have  it  that  way, — and  he  's  per- 
fectly right.  Well;  he  '11  have  his  reward!  It  will 
make  a  man  of  him." 

"  I  don't  think  he  needed  that  to  make  a  man  of 
him." 


In  Bachelor  Quarters  461 

"Yes,  he  did!  He  needed  just  that!  A  person 
can't  play  the  suppliant  for  years  without  sacrificing 
something.  Paul  was  always  at  a  disadvantage  be- 
fore. He  never  stood  squarely  on  his  own  feet. 
Everything  he  said  and  did  had  a  twist  in  your  direc- 
tion. He  has  thrown  that  off  now,  and,  mark  my 
words, — he  '11  never  ask  you  again." 

"I  was  not  afraid  of  that,"  Katherine  protested; 
"  I  had  it  in  my  own  hands.  Paul  's  no  beggar,"  she 
added,  in  grateful  recollection  of  years  of  generous 
forbearance. 

"Well,  you  're  safe  now, — or,  if  you  're  not,  you  '11 
have  yourself  to  thank  for  it.  He  has  made  a  stand 
— doubtless  for  your  sake, — I  admit  that.  But  he  's 
going  to  feel  the  good  of  it  himself.  What  's  this  he  's 
working  at?" 

"Germs.  I  don't  understand  much  about  it,  but 
the  doctors  are  finding  out  what  makes  things  catch- 
ing." 

"  Hm!  I  could  have  told  them  that,  any  time  these 
fifty  years!  It  's  bad  air,  and  close  quarters,  and," 
— with  a  very  impressive  lowering  of  the  voice, — 
"I  've  had  my  suspicions  of  pocket  handkerchiefs! 
However,"  the  old  lady  continued,  bowing  pleasantly 
to  a  passing  sleigh,  "they  '11  put  long  names  to  it, 
and  print  pamphlets  about  it, — I  know  'em! — and 
Paul  will  make  up  one  of  the  names  and  write  a 
treatise  on  it,  and  then  he  '11  be  famous.  Men  are 
different  from  us,  Katherine,"  she  added,  confiden- 
tially. "I  shouldn't  wonder  if  there  were  to  come  a 
time  when  your  young  doctor  will  recognize  that  life 
has  its  compensations." 

Katherine  pondered  a  good  deal  upon  her  grand- 
mother's words,  and  they  did  not  lack  subsequent 


462  Katherine  Day 

confirmation.  There  was  certainly  no  denying  that 
Paul  was  more  disengaged  than  he  used  to  be,  that 
his  moods  were  far  less  dependent  on  hers.  She  was 
seeing  him  oftener,  too.  He  came  out,  not  infre- 
quently, when  she  was  spending  her  prescribed  week 
with  her  grandmother,  and  they  all  enjoyed  his  visits. 
There  was  a  new  ease  and  breadth  in  the  impression 
he  made ;  one  felt  the  freer  grasp  of  a  mind  no  longer 
warped  in  one  direction.  It  made  Katherine  think 
of  the  fine  harmonies  of  modern  orchestral  music, 
wherein  the  theme,  the  "melody,  gets  so  completely 
merged.  It  may  still  be  an  integral  part  of  the  de- 
velopment, but  it  does  not  persist  in  any  recognizable 
iteration.  Curious,  that  Paul,  the  unmusical,  should 
suggest  so  elaborate  and  technical  a  comparison. 
But  she  had  thought  of  it  at  the  Symphony  Concert 
the  other  day.  Yes,  Paul  was  modern  and  subtle; 
different  as  possible  from  Tom. 

Katherine  found  herself  pursuing  the  fanciful  an- 
alogy one  Sunday  afternoon  when  they  had  all  three 
chanced  to  meet  at  Grandmother  Day's.  Paul  had 
been  telling  her  of  an  experiment  of  his,  and  without 
the  implication  that  his  chief  aim  in  pursuing  it  at  all 
was  to  engage  her  interest.  After  a  while  Tom  came 
in,  and  took  a  hand  in  the  talk.  He  had  got  hold  of 
some  reports  of  recent  work  upon  anthrax,  and  he 
had  read  them  to  good  purpose.  The  two  men 
threshed  out  the  subject  pretty  thoroughly.  Both 
talked  well,  but  of  course  it  was  Paul  that  was  master 
in  his  own  province,  and  again  Katherine  was  re- 
minded of  that  harmony  she  had  been  thinking  of, — 
that  complicated  modern  harmony.  Tom  seemed 
primitive  in  comparison;  he  was  all  made  up  of  a 
few  big  persistent  themes  that  would  never  lose  them- 


In   Bachelor  Quarters  463 

selves  in  the  subtleties  of  counterpoint.  They  would 
come  to  nothing  more  involved  than  a  strong,  harsh 
dissonance ;  yet — is  there  anything  in  all  music  more 
satisfactory  than  a  dissonance  resolved? 

"Never  shirk  a  dissonance,"  the  Dresden  music- 
teacher  used  to  say.  "Strike  it  boldly,  or  it  will 
sound  like  a  discord.  That  's  confusing  the  best  with 
the  worst." 

When  Paul  was  gone,  Tom  stood  at  the  window 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  watching  the  straight 
tall  figure  passing  down  the  path.  How  he  had 
changed  since  the  day  Tom  saw  him  first,  striding 
down  that  same  path,  in  full  retreat  as  it  seemed! 
He  wondered  how  in  thunder  it  had  happened  that 
a  man  of  his  calibre  had  failed  with  any  girl — even 
Katherine.  He,  Tom,  would  never  have  given  in. 
He  had  never  met  his  match  but  once,  and  that  was  in 
himself.  He  had  been  floored,  fatally  floored,  but  not 
by  any  external  adversary.  Tom  never  gave  even 
Winny  the  credit  of  getting  the  better  of  him.  She 
had  been  an  accident, — it  might  have  been  anyone 
else.  The  real  enemy  had  been  himself. 

He  turned  on  his  heel,  and  came  face  to  face  with 
Katherine,  just  returned  from  speeding  the  parting 
guest.  Well;  Paul  had  failed  with  her, — that  was 
sure.  If  there  had  been  the  ghost  of  a  chance  for  him 
she  would  not  have  escorted  him  to  the  door;  he 
would  have  had  to  find  his  own  way  out.  Would  any- 
one succeed  any  better  with  her?  Hardly.  And  the 
poor  dog  in  the  manger  felt  a  quite  savage  exultation 
in  that  assurance  which  nothing  had  ever  really 
shaken,  that  Katherine  would  never — marry  out  of 
the  family! 

By  way  of  penance  for  such  unjustifiable  sentiments, 


464  Katherine  Day 

and  for  the  outrageous  egotism  that  prompted  them 
Tom  remarked,  "I  had  no  idea  of  finding  you  here, 
Katherine!  I  don't  think  I  've  caught  on  to  your, 
times  and  seasons  yet." 

"They  are  not  very  regular,"  she  replied,  thinking 
that  he  really  might  have  been  more  polite,  and  yet 
finding  it  delightfully  natural  that  he  should  say  the 
wrong  thing.  "I  only  came  out  yesterday  because 
Aunt  Fanny  was  in  bed  with  a  cold." 

"And  sha'n't  I  see  grandmother?" 

"Yes,  indeed!  She  '11  be  down  presently.  In  fact, 
there  she  is." 

"Well,  Tom,"  Mrs.  Day  asked,  when  she  had  en- 
throned herself  in  her  favorite  chair,  "have  you 
heard  from  your  family  lately?" 

"Oh,  yes;  Winny  writes  once  a  week.  That  I 
should  of  course  insist  upon,"  he  added,  a  trifle 
sharply. 

"And  the  boy?" 

"Oh,  he  's  first  rate!  He  's  playing  out  all  day,  and 
growing  like  a  mushroom!  What  I  really  came  out 
for,  Grandmother,  was  to  consult  with  you  about  a 
house.  You  know,  I  never  meant  to  live  in  an  apart- 
ment after  the  boy  was  big  enough  to  run  about ;  and 
a  city  yard  does  n't  amount  to  anything.  I  am  going 
to  try  and  persuade  Winny  to  have  a  house  out  of 
town.  I  think  if  you  would  back  me  up  in  it,  you 
would  have  great  influence  with  her." 

"You  are  going  after  them  in  the  summer?" 

"Yes,  in  August.  Winny  thinks  the  late  autumn 
would  do,  but  I  don't  want  the  cold  weather  to  come 
on  suddenly  after  the  warm  winter  in  the  south. 
Arthur  's  strong  as  a  little  horse,  but  he  might  feel  it 
if  it  came  too  suddenly." 


In  Bachelor  Quarters  465 

"Let  me  see,  Arthur  will  be  three  years  old." 
"Yes;   quite  a  boy,  you  see!   I  suppose  he  '11  have 
a  sled  another  winter,  and  a  little  snow-shovel.     He 
will  have  forgotten  all  about  the  snow." 

And  Grandmother  Day,  with  the  new  indulgence 
that  she  was  acquiring,  encouraged  him  to  talk  of  the 
boy;  while  Katherine,  sitting  by,  thought  how  won- 
derfully that  great  dissonance  that  was  Tom  resolved 
itself  into  the  strong,  simple  tonic  chord  of  love  for  a 
little  child! 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A    BLEAK    CORNER 

"Here,  blindfold  through  the  maze  of  things  we  walk 
By  a  slight  thread  of  false,  true,  right  and  wrong." 

BUT  Winny  was  not  persuaded  to  consider  the 
house  out  of  town,  nor  did  the  boy  have  his 
sled  and  snow-shovel  that  winter.  For  again,  in  Sep- 
tember, Tom  came  home — alone.  He  did  not  report 
at  once,  even  to  his  grandmother,  and  only  by  chance 
did  it  become  known  that  he  had  returned  to  his  old 
quarters.  When,  at  last,  he  made  his  appearance 
among  his  kinsfolk,  it  was  armed  with  a  crust  of 
reserve  which  repelled  inquiry. 

Yes;  Winny  had  decided  to  spend  another  winter 
abroad, — on  account  of  her  health,  it  seemed.  No, 
there  was  nothing  serious  amiss. '  She  acted  entirely 
on  her  own  judgment  in  the  matter,  and  Winny 's 
judgment  was  usually  very  good  where  her  own  inter- 
ests were  concerned.  The  boy?  Oh,  he  was  thriving. 

But  it  was  noticed  that  Tom  did  not  Ijrag  about  the 
boy  any  more;  nor  did  a  thousand  indifferent  things 
seem  to  remind  him  of  the  "little  chap"  as  in  times 
past.  Indeed,  he  never  voluntarily  spoke  Arthur's 
name  nor  Winny 's.  Not  that  there  was  much  oppor- 
tunity for  observation  touching  his  speech  or  his 
silences,  for  he  was  rarely  seen.  During  the  whole 


A  Bleak  Corner  467 

winter,  in  fact,  he  came  but  twice  to  his  grandmother's 
house,  and,  although  bidden  for  both  the  Thanks- 
giving and  Christmas  festivities,  he  failed  to  take 
advantage  of  his  invitations.  On  each  of  these  occa- 
sions he  found  himself  obliged  to  go  west  on  business, 
—that  business  that  had  apparently  come  to  be  the 
one  interest  of  his  life. 

Katherine  saw  him  but  once  that  season.  It  was 
on  the  occasion  of  a  chance  meeting  in  the  street. 
She  had  herself  been  under  a  long  strain  on  a  critical 
case,  and  her  patient  had  died  that  morning.  Per- 
haps that  circumstance  colored  her  views, — for  she 
took  a  very  black  view  indeed  of  the  impression  Tom 
made.  His  speech  was  curt,  his  manner  constrained, 
and  in  his  face  was  a  look  of  settled  cynicism,  hard 
and  forbidding. 

Katherine  did  not  dare  ask  for  Winny  and  the  boy ; 
she  knew  better  than  that.  Instead,  and  that  there 
should  be  no  awkward  gap,  she  made  inquiries  for 
Tom's  father  which  proved  a  grateful  theme. 

The  old  gentleman  was  doing  first-rate;  he  was 
writing  a  book,  it  seemed, — a  biography  of  some  great 
gun  of  a  radical.  Tom  was  glad  his  father  had  started 
in  on  a  new  sort  of  work,  now  that  he  was  obliged  to 
leave  so  much  of  the  preaching  to  his  colleague. 

"After  all,  there  's  nothing  like  work,"  Tom  opined. 
"If  it  was  the  serpent  that  introduced  it,  it  's  really 
time  we  put  up  something  to  him,  a  temple,  or  a  statue, 
or  something." 

Katherine  tried  to  answer  in  the  same  vein.  It  was 
a  bitterly  cold  day,  and  they  were  standing  on  an 
exposed  street  corner. 

"Somebody  ought  to  have  thought  of  that  before 
we  stopped  believing  in  myths,"  she  returned. 


468  Katharine  Day 

"Some  of  us  have  n't  stopped  that  yet,"  Tom  re- 
torted, with  a  significant  look  toward  a  new  church, 
just  building  on  the  opposite  corner. 

"You  don't  mean  that,  Tom,"  she  protested.  "You 
believe  in  what  that  stands  for,  just  as  much  as  I  do ! " 

"Do  I?  Well;  I  'm  glad  you  think  so!  But — look 
here,  you  '11  take  cold  if  you  stand  about  in  this  wind ! " 
— and  Tom  strode  off  to  prevent  himself  from  telling 
Katherine  how  tired  she  was  and  begging  her  to  take 
a  rest.  He  did  n't  propose  to  worry  about  Katherine. 
He  had  enough  to  do,  to  put  through  that  matter  that 
Ford  &  Bridgman  had  turned  over  to  him,  and  that 
had  sent  him  into  this  part  of  the  city  to  tackle  a  bed- 
ridden capitalist. 

And  Katherine  went  home  to  rest  confirmed  in  all 
the  gloomy  forebodings  that  had  haunted  her  mind 
for  weeks  past.  It  was  well  that  Paul  had  given  her 
up.  There  would  have  been  little  chance  for  him  now 
— the  less  chance  for  him,  perhaps,  the  greater  the 
chance  of  happiness  it  had  been  his  to  offer  her.  She 
would  not  have  taken  happiness  on  any  terms — not  if 
it  had  been  complete.  She  would  not  be  happy  now, 
when  Tom — ah,  Tom!  What  had  she  been  thinking  of 
when  she  hoped  he  was  suffering,  that  he  was  remorse- 
ful? Even  if  he  had  deserved  the  worst,  his  suffering 
would  have  been  intolerable  to  her.  But  now,  when 
he  had  deserved  no  ill  at  all, — to  be  defrauded  of  his 
rights,  to  be  deprived  of  the  one  creature  in  the  world 
he  loved!  For  Winny's  best  friend  had  no  more 
illusions  about  Winny,  nor  about  Tom's  sentiments 
towards  her.  She  was  an  idealist,  but  not  a  dupe, 
and,  although  her  chances  of  observation  had  been 
restricted,  she  had  come  to  understand  that  ill-starred 
relation  pretty  clearly.  But, — the  boy! 


A  Bleak  Corner  469 

Katherine  was  not  given  to  weeping  for  herself  or 
others,  but  on  that  dreary  morning  as  she  threw  her- 
self down  upon  her  lounge,  spent  with  the  day's  emo- 
tions more  yet  than  with  the  labors  of  the  night,  slow, 
bitter  tears  found  their  way  to  the  eyes  that  had 
watched  so  faithfully  and  so  wisely,  and  that  sleep  which 
the  nurse  is  trained  to  command  was  long  in  coming. 

And  Tom  went  his  ways,  haunted,  in  spite  of  him- 
self, by  Katherine's  face.  She  was  using  herself  up, 
and  that  was  perfect  folly!  He  must  see  his  grand- 
mother about  it.  A  stop  must  be  put  to  it.  What 
business  had  a  girl  like  that  to  throw  herself  away 
on  a  lot  of  paupers?  She  ought  to  be  living  her  own 
life,  not  casting  pearls  before  swine, — and,  at  this 
point  in  his  meditations,  Tom  flung  a  look  of  such 
vindictive  rage  upon  a  ragged,  half-clad  girl  hurrying 
by,  that  he  felt  obliged  to  go  after  her  and  give  her  a 
quarter.  She  was  a  shrunken,  shivering  little  crea- 
ture, with  Italian  eyes,  and  a  ready  "Grazie  S  ignore!" 
Was  it  the  Italian  eyes  that  made  him  think  of  Kath- 
erine, as  he  recalled  her  on  that  far-away  evening 
when  they  played  "  dumb  crambo,"  and  she  made  such 
an  animated  Maud  Muller?  He  remembered  riding  up 
on  a  sawhorse,  and  that  she  was  flourishing  her  rake 
so  energetically  that  her  father  called:  "Take  care, 
Katherine,  or  you'll  have  a  hole  in  the  carpet!" 
Katherine  always  used  to  do  everything  with  tre- 
mendous spirit,  and  she  always  had  Italian  eyes, — only 
franker  than  that,  more  open,  more  New  England, 
uncommonly  frank,  when  one  considered  the  length 
of  the  lashes.  With  those  eyes  Katherine  might  have 
had  things  pretty  much  her  own  way ;  she  might  have 
been  what  they  called  a  "success" — he  believed  she 
was  a  good  deal  of  a  favorite,  long  ago,  when  she  used 


470  Katherine  Day 

to  stay  with  Aunt  Anne,  and  go  about  junketing. 
That  was  the  sort  of  thing  girls  liked — it  was  the  sort 
of  thing  they  were  for — until  they  married,  of  course. 
And  as  Katherine  apparently  had  no  intention  of 
marrying,  she  might  have  prolonged  that  period  quite 
indefinitely.  Because,  attractive  as  she  had  been  in 
the  old  days,  it  was  nothing  to  what  she  might  be  now 
if  she  would  throw  over  her  paupers  and  come  out  into 
the  world  and  shine.  She  had  no  business  to  use  her- 
self up  that  way — she  had  no  business  to  work  like  that. 

To  work !  What  had  they  been  saying  about  work  ? 
Oh,  yes;  that  it  was  the  best  thing  there  is.  But  that 
was  only  from  his  standpoint,  or  his  father's;  from 
the  standpoint  of  a  man  whose  life  had  gone  off  its 
natural  bias.  It  ought  not  to  be  true  of  Katherine, 
— of  her,  who  had  kept  such  a  steady  hand  on  herself, 
—who  had  never  come  to  grief.  To  grief!  Had  she 
then  never  come  to  grief? — and  suddenly  Tom  caught 
his  breath.  Her  face  as  he  saw  it  just  now  ?  Was  that 
merely  the  result  of  a  little  overwork  ? — that  look  of 
experience,  yes,  of  suffering, — of  comprehension? 

Tom  was  seated  at  his  desk  in  the  office  when 
there  came  to  him  a  hint,  a  fleeting  vision  of  the 
impossible.  Where  did  it  come  from?  Who  could 
tell?  Certainly  not  from  the  perusal  of  those  letters 
awaiting  his  signature;  surely  not  from  the  contem- 
plation of  that  telegram  that  was  to  put  a  small  fortune 
into  his  pocket! 

"  Harris,"  he  heard  himself  saying, — "you  'd better 
try  again  at  this  memorandum  to  the  Millers.  It  's 
too  final!  Leave  an  opening,  or,  here — I  '11  dictate." 
And  as  he  dictated, — clear,  concise,  tactful, — he  was 
aware  that  he  was  holding  something  at  arm's  length. 

Tom  held  it  at  arm's  length  all  winter,  as  he  held 


A  Bleak  Corner  471 

everything  else  at  arm's  length  excepting  business. 
And  when  summer  came,  when  the  mild  weather  could 
be  depended  upon,  and  our  rough  New  England  had 
turned  gay  and  sunny,  and  fit  for  a  child  to  play  in, 
he  crossed  the  great  seas  and  brought  his  boy  home. 
And  when  he  had  his  boy  back,  Tom  turned  suddenly 
human  again. 

He  was  no  more  inclined  than  before  to  talk  of 
Winny,  to  give  any  opinion  as  to  the  wisdom  of  her 
decision  to  spend  another  winter  in  Paris.  She  was 
under  treatment  over  there,  he  told  Grandmother 
Day;  some  nervous  affection,  he  believed,  that  the 
doctors  at  home  had  not  got  hold  of  yet.  No,  she 
would  not  be  lonely.  She  had  made  a  good  many 
friends  in  Paris,  even  among  French  people.  In  fact, 
she  was  very  much  admired.  He  had  met  a  title  or 
two  in  her  parlor.  He  did  not  take  much  stock  in 
them  himself,  but  Winny  seemed  to  think  them  em- 
bellishing. Yes,  he  believed  it  was  the  genuine  article 
— this  segment  of  the  French  aristocracy  which  she 
had  fallen  in  with.  It  had  all  come  about  through  an 
old  countess  she  had  met  at  Mentone,  quite  a  whoop- 
ing old  swell,  he  believed — the  kind  that  has  n't  room 
on  her  visiting  list  for  any  recent  social  creations,  no 
matter  how  long  their  handles  may  be.  But  she  had 
taken  a  liking  to  Winny,  and  had  given  her  a  start, 
and  Winny  had  made  the  most  of  it .  She  had  a  pretty 
suite  in  a  good  hotel  not  far  from  the  Bois;  lots  of  sun, 
and  plenty  of  passing.  She  seemed  likely  to  have  a 
pleasant  winter,  but  he  thought  he  might  as  well 
bring  the  little  chap  home. 

"  If  he  had  known  me,  I  might  have  let  Winny  keep 
him  with  her ;  but — he  called  me  Monsieur! ' '  Tom 's 
face,  as  he  pronounced  the  word,  was  a  study. 


472  Katharine  Day 

"Perhaps  it  was  the  beard,"  Mrs.  Day  suggested, 
soothingly.  "I  hardly  knew  you  myself  last  winter. 
But," — and  here,  at  least,  she  could  speak  her  mind — 
"I  hope  you  mean  to  keep  him  now,  whatever  hap- 
pens!" 

"  I  shall  keep  him  until  I  hear  him  call  his  mother 
Madame!"  Tom  returned,  with  grim  facetiousness. 
And  that  was  as  near  as  he  came  to  any  open  expres- 
sion of  resentment. 

"  And  now  you  will  both  come  and  stay  with  me  for 
the  winter!" 

"Oh,  Grandmother!  That  is  too  much  for  you  to 
offer!" 

"  I  don't  see  what  could  be  more  natural,"  she  urged, 
as  if  it  were  quite  a  matter  of  course.  "  Here  's  this 
great  house  with  only  your  Aunt  Fanny  and  me  to  go 
purring  about  in  it.  It  would  be  much  snugger  with 
you  two  to  help  us  keep  warm.  Ah,  there  he  comes! 
Arthur,"  she  asked,  as  the  little  four-year-old  entered, 
looking  comically  mannish  in  his  tiny  French  trousers. 
— "  How  should  you  like  to  come  and  live  with  Grand- 
mother Day?" 

"Is  that  your  garden?"  the  child  inquired,  with  a 
queer  little  French  accent.  He  had  been  playing 
about  in  the  sunshine  under  Peter's  benign  super- 
vision. 

"Yes;  that  is  my  garden,  and  perhaps  Peter  will 
let  you  have  a  little  flower-bed  of  your  own  in  the 
spring." 

"You  would  like  that;  wouldn't  you,  Arthur?" 
Tom  put  in.  "You  could  plant  the  seeds,  and  then 
water  them  until  the  flowers  came  up." 

"We  used  to  buy  our  flowers  in  a  shop,"  the  child 
answered,  doubtfully. 


A  Bleak  Corner  473 

"But  it  's  twice  the  fun  to  grow  them  yourself," 
said  Tom. 

"And  you  will  come  and  live  with  grandmother?" 
she  asked  again — whereby  the  inference  could  hardly 
escape  an  observant  mind,  that  Grandmother  Day 
had  undergone  something  of  that  modern  process 
which  teaches  the  consideration  of  childish  preferences. 

Arthur  hesitated,  while  his  serious  gray  eyes  looked 
from  one  to  the  other  of  his  two  interlocutors.  Then, 
suddenly  flinging  himself  upon  his  father:  "No!  no! 
I  want  to  stay  with  papa!"  he  cried. 

"He  knows  what  to  call  you  now,"  Mrs.  Day 
observed,  with  a  benignant  smile  at  father  and  son 
who,  to  tell  the  truth,  seemed  to  her  almost  equally 
in  need  of  care  and  kindness. 

"Yes,  Arthur,"  Tom  was  saying.  "Of  course  we 
shall  stay  together,  you  and  I.  But  Grandmother 
Day  is  so  kind  and  so  hospitable  that  she  is  going  to 
let  us  both  come  and  live  in  this  beautiful  house  where 
papa  used  to  visit  when  he  was  a  little  boy.  You  will 
like  that;  shall  you  not?" 

"If  you  come  too,"  the  child  insisted. 

"Then  let  us  thank  Grandmother  Day,  and  tell  her 
nobody  was  ever  half  so  kind  as  she." 

" Nobody  half  so  kind,"  little  Arthur  repeated;  but 
his  eyes  were  fixed  on  his  father's  face,  and  Grand- 
mother Day  was  well  content. 


CHAPTER  IX 

READJUSTMENTS 

"A  breath  of  God  made  manifest  in  flesh 
Subjects  the  world  to  change  from  time  to  time." 

IT  was  quite  wonderful  how  things  fell  back  into 
their  normal  relation  after  this,  how  easy  it  be- 
came to  take  the  sane,  undistorted  view  of  life.  The 
coming  among  them  of  that  little  child  was  reviving 
and  restorative  as  the  blowing  of  a  spicy  breeze  across 
a  sultry  plain. 

Arthur  was  the  most  natural  little  creature  in  the 
world — affectionate  and  headstrong,  unconscious  and 
exacting.  He  tyrannized  over  Grandmother  Day,  and 
he  came  to  fearful  conflicts  of  will  with  his  father ;  he 
trampled  old  Peter  under  foot,  and  wrought  peculiar 
havoc  with  Aunt  Fanny's  nerves ;  and  always  he  hailed 
the  rare  advents  of  Katherine — to  whose  name  he 
stoutly  refused  to  prefix  any  courtesy  title — as  a  special 
compliment  to  himself.  In  short,  he  was  altogether  a 
boy  like  any  other  boy,  to  be  loved  and  petted,  pun- 
ished and  forgiven,  but  not  to  be  sentimentalized  over. 

Katherine  could  not  think  without  blushing,  of  her 
hour  of  weakness  on  that  day  when  she  had  sacrificed 
her  much-needed  rest  to  an  overwrought  solicitude 
for  Tom,  to  a  morbid  consideration  of  his  wrongs. 
It  had  been  hard,  of  course, — the  two  years'  separa- 


Readjustments  475 

tion — but,  after  all,  the  child  had  thriven  on  it,  and 
now,  here  he  was,  a  lusty  little  comrade,  and  if  Kath- 
erine  knew  anything  about  Torn,  that  far  from  weak- 
kneed  personage  was  not  like  to  loosen  his  grip  on  his 
own  again.  Probably  another  year  would  bring 
Winny  home.  She  would  have  had  her  fill  of  the 
foreign  life, — its  distractions,  its  artificialities, — and 
she  would  discover  the  good  natural  hunger  of  a 
mother  for  her  child.  Winny  was  childish  and  self- 
indulgent — that  even  Katherine  could  no  longer  deny 
— but  she  was  made  of  flesh  and  blood  like  other 
women.  Katherine  thought  of  the  mothers  she  had 
known  in  her  years  of  service;  the  destitute,  the 
vicious, — worst,  perhaps,  of  all,  the  narrow  and  sordid. 
Not  one  among  them  would  have  relinquished  her 
child  for  the  sake  of  mere  self-interest.  They  might 
neglect  their  boys  and  girls,  they  might  even  maltreat 
them,  but — as  for  voluntarily  giving  them  up — that 
was  out  of  nature. 

Yes;  Winny  would  be  back  again  another  year, — 
glad  to  be  at  home, — ready  to  meet  Tom  half  way  in 
that  fine,  sensible  effort  of  his  to  keep  life  sweet  and 
healthy.  How  consistent  he  was,  and  how  steady! 
If  Winny  might  only  grow  up,  at  last,  and  acquire  the 
conscience  and  the  understanding  of  a  woman,  all 
might  yet  come  clear  between  them. 

Katherine  was  not  much  at  her  grandmother's  that 
winter.  The  old  lady  had  discovered — a  little  tardily, 
she  admitted — that  her  granddaughter  needed  some- 
thing more  enlivening  in  her  periodical  vacations  than 
was  to  be  found  in  the  society  of  two  old  ladies  and  a 
small  boy,  and  the  Glynns  were  not  slow  to  take 
advantage  of  the  concession.  Katherine,  amused 
to  find  herself  once  more  under  marching  orders, 


476  Katharine  Day 

dutifully  fell  into  line.  If  she  had  never  yet  failed  to 
profit  by  her  grandmother's  generalship,  however,  the 
present  instance  formed  no  exception  to  the  rule ;  for 
life  at  Aunt  Anne's  was  always  agreeable.  One  met 
there  all  sorts  of  pleasant  people.  Girls  whom  Kath- 
erine  had  made  friends  with  years  ago  had  grown  into 
the  right  kind  of  women  of  the  world,  and  she  found 
them  more  congenial  than  ever;  men  of  mark, — her 
Uncle  Theodore's  bar  associates  or  writers  and  artists 
mustered  to  her  standard  by  her  old  admirer  Allan 
Delano, — treated  her  with  flattering  consideration. 
She  had  a  peculiar  charm  for  people  of  imagination, 
due  in  no  small  measure  to  a  general  knowledge  of  the 
circumstances  of  her  life.  When  one  who  is  well 
equipped  with  personal  and  worldly  advantages,  un- 
obtrusively sacrifices  these  to  an  ideal  aim,  few  there 
are  who  are  unsusceptible  to  the  added  grace  thereby 
conferred.  It  is  something  when  you  are  discussing 
with  an  attractive  girl,  becomingly  attired,  that  bril- 
liant socialistic  romance  of  Henry  Haelstrom's — The 
Under  Dog — suddenly  to  remember  that  your  com- 
panion knows  presumably  several  times  as  much  as 
you  do  of  the  unlucky  canine  in  question,  his  constitu- 
tion and  habitat;  and  if,  when  lightly  skimming  the 
surface  of  things,  it  occurs  to  you  that  those  fine  eyes, 
bent  in  answering  mockery  upon  yours,  are  by  way  of 
making  excursions  below  the  surface  which  it  would 
tax  your  penetration  to  follow,  you  may  find  yourself 
impelled  to  give  their  owner  a  hint  of  that  something 
real  inside  yourself  which  you  are  ordinarily  so  shame- 
faced about !  And  such  men  and  women,  the  best  that 
society  offers,  gave  of  their  best  to  this  girl  who  still 
remembered  an  ambitious  childhood  when  she  had 
stood  on  the  high  beam  and  harangued  her  wondering 


Readjustments  477 

playmates,  twenty  feet  below.  That  obstreperous 
little  person  had  learned,  meanwhile,  that  listening 
has  many  advantages  over  haranguing;  and,  if  she 
enjoyed  her  new  honors  and  opportunities  with  an 
engaging  and  very  genuine  unconsciousness,  she  rel- 
ished them  none  the  less  for  that. 

It  was  no  wonder  then  if  Tom,  on  the  rare  occasions 
when  they  met,  found  himself  relieved  of  any  senti- 
mental concern  about  Katherine.  So  manifest,  in- 
deed, was  the  balance  and  harmony  of  her  attitude 
toward  life,  that  he,  too,  found  cause  for  blushing 
when  he  thought  of  that  encounter  of  theirs  on  the 
bleak  street  corner,  and  of  the  unchastened  imaginings 
it  had  given  rise  to.  He  did  not  think  of  it  often,  but, 
as  often  as  he  did  so,  he  called  himself  a  donkey. 
Good  Lord !  Katherine  was  all  right !  And  if  it  gave 
him  a  jealous  twinge  to  think  how  all  right  she  was, 
that  circumstance  would  have  caused  him  to  apply  to 
himself  a  more  opprobrious  epithet  still  than  donkey, 
had  his  vocabulary  afforded  such. 

Tom,  meanwhile,  as  has  been  said,  was  getting 
rapidly  humanized.  While  his  life  undoubtedly  cen- 
tred upon  the  boy,  it  broadened  out  from  that  centre 
in  a  quite  new  and  adventuresome  manner.  He  found 
himself  taking  a  more  sympathetic  interest  in  his 
fellow-creatures,  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  were 
the  kind  of  men  among  whom  the  boy  was  to  grow 
up.  He  must  try  to  get  the  hang  of  these  social 
matters  for  the  boy's  sake,  and  really  it  was  high  time 
that  he  began  making  friends.  He  was  not  going  to 
have  Arthur  grow  up  a  narrow,  self-opinionated  cub, 
foredoomed  to  blunders,  like  a  certain  youth  whom 
he  used  to  see  in  the  looking-glass.  Arthur  should  not 
wreck  his  life  on  such  avoidable  rocks  as  ignorance  of 


478  Katherine  Day 

himself  and  the  world.  He  must  brush  against  men, 
and  especially  women.  He  must  learn  to  discriminate 
between  paste  and  diamonds;  he  must  not  be  be- 
guiled into  bankruptcy  before  he  had  fairly  discovered 
that  he  had  a  heritage  to  lose. 

Tom's  metaphors  may  have  been  mixed,  but  they 
were  at  least  forcible,  and  he  lived  up  to  them.  Yes, 
Arthur  must  know  people,  and  of  the  right  sort.  And 
as  a  step  in  that  direction  Tom  joined  a  club.  He  got 
his  invitation  to  do  so  from  an  unexpected  quarter. 

It  happened  that  Paul  Stuy  vesant  looked  in  at  the  of- 
fice one  day  with  a  stock  certificate  that  he  wanted  split 
in  two.  Tom  had  not  chanced  to  see  his  new  customer, 
but  when  the  certificate  for  the  unsold  remainder  of 
shares  came  under  his  notice  it  struck  him  that  he 
might  hand  it  to  Stuyvesant  himself.  That  assiduous 
investigator  interested  him.  He  had  brains  and  ambi- 
tion, and  also  he  was  a  man  of  the  world.  In  short, 
he  belonged  to  the  class  of  men  with  whom  he 
should  wish  to  associate  Arthur. 

Tom  found  Paul  alone  in  his  office,  that  evening, 
occupied  with  a  dry  looking  pamphlet  which  he  seemed 
quite  ready  to  relinquish  in  exchange  for  a  taste  of 
human  intercourse. 

"Why,  McLean!  This  is  first-rate,"  he  declared. 
"Come  in,  and  have  a  smoke." 

"Thanks;  I  brought  you  a  certificate  I  came  across 
that  had  your  name  on  it." 

Paul  colored  slightly,  at  having  been  caught  sacri- 
ficing his  patrimony. 

"  Oh,  you  're  very  good,"  he  said.  "  You  ought  n't 
to  have  bothered." 

"I  did  n't  bother.  I  only  made  a  pretext.  I  was 
hankering  after  my  kind," 


Readjustments  479 

"Yes;  a  man  does  now  and  then.  Why  don't  you 
join  a  club?" 

"I  have  thought  of  it.  I  don't  know  that  I 
should  use  it  much,  but  I  should  really  like  to  wake 
up  a  bit.  I  sometimes  feel  as  if  I  had  been  napping  it 
down  there  in  State  Street  like  any  old  Rip  Van 
Winkle." 

"It  didn't  look  particularly  soporific  when  I 
dropped  in  at  your  shop  the  other  day.  I  could  n't 
catch  your  eye,  so  I  put  up  with  an  underling." 

"Yes;  I  did  n't  know  you  had  been  in  until  yes- 
terday, when  they  brought  me  your  check  to  sign. 
That  's  a  jolly  good  stock,  by  the  way,  that  you  've 
been  unloading.  I  wish  I  had  known  about  it;  you 
might  have  decided  to  hold  on." 

"Oh,  well;  it  was  too  small  a  matter  to  be  worth 
talking  about,  and  I  wanted  the  money.  Would  you 
like  to  see  what  it  's  going  into?" 

Paul  led  the  way  into  a  small  alcove  which  he  had 
fitted  up  as  a  laboratory.  Close  by  the  gaslight,  that 
was  made  to  shine  through  a  shoemaker's  globe  filled 
with  glycerine,  was  an  up-to-date  microscope  of  the 
most  powerful  grade. 

"There!"  he  exclaimed,  with  na'ive  pride.  "The 
old  stock  may  double  up  for  all  I  care.  I  would  n't 
swap  back!" 

"  So  you  've  been  wasting  your  substance  on  riotous 
microscopes!"  Tom  observed,  regarding  the  new 
treasure  with  much  respect. 

"Yes;  would  you  like  to  take  a  look  at  the  prodi- 
gality?" Paul  had  already  found  that  this  money- 
changer had  some  inklings  about  anthrax.  Perhaps 
he  would  have  a  soul  for  an  oil-immersion  lens. 

Since  his  talk  with  Archie,  Paul  had  taken  more 


480  Katherine  Day 

interest  in  Tom;  and  when  a  subject  has  once  made 
its  way  within  our  range  we  are  apt  to  find  light 
striking  it  from  unexpected  quarters.  He  had  been 
listening  at  the  club  the  other  day  to  a  discussion  of 
the  moral  aspect  of  stock-broking,  and  Thomas  Mc- 
Lean had  been  cited  as  an  instance  of  what  ability 
could  do  without  any  aid  from  questionable  methods. 
"Yes;  he  's  sound!" — had  been  the  laconic  comment 
of  an  old  hand  in  the  business,  a  man  who  for  forty 
years  had  stood  for  integrity  and  acumen. 

Paul  had  wondered  then,  as  he  had  often  done 
before,  how  a  fellow  of  such  brains  and  force  could 
have  blundered  so  egregiously — and  so  disastrously; 
for  no  one  knew  better  than  he  what  Tom's  blundering 
had  cost  Archie.  However,  Archie  ought  to  know 
the  rights  of  it,  and  Archie  bore  no  malice.  After  all, 
it  was  clear  that  there  was  a  discrepancy  on  one  side 
or  the  other  of  the  account,  and  it  was  perhaps  as  easy 
to  believe  that  a  man  of  brains  should  be  betrayed 
into  a  lapse  of  gumption  as  that  one  habitually 
honorable  should  prove  guilty  of  sporadic  treachery. 
On  the  whole,  and  quite  apart  from  Archie's  assur- 
ances, Paul  was  inclined  to  think  that  integrity  of 
character  was  a  more  consistent  thing  than  mental 
shrewdness ;  that  a  blunder  was  more  credible  in  the 
intelligent  than  moral  obliquity  in  the  upright.  Any- 
how the  man  had  a  mind  open  to  the  blandishments 
of  the  streptococcus  germ,  and  he  did  n't  have  to  be 
told  that  aniline  colors  have  the  selective  affinity. 
Paul  thought  he  should  like  to  see  more  of  him,  and 
to  that  end  he  would  offer  to  put  him  up  at  the  St. 
Swivin  Club. 

"And  where  do  you  bunk?"  Tom  asked,  when,  an 
hour  later,  he  was  taking  his  leave.  The  St.  Swivin 


Readjustments  481 

was  the  club  he  had  had  in  his  eye,  and  his  apprecia- 
tion of  the  bacteriologist's  offer  had  roused  him  to  an 
unusual  personal  interest. 

"Oh,  I  bunk  here!  It  's  handy  to  be  on  deck  at 
all  hours!" 

"So!"  Torn  cogitated,  as  he  walked  back  to  his 
own  quarters, — for  he  had  kept  his  bachelor  lodgings, 
and  often  spent  a  night  there.  "So!  You're  im- 
molating yourself  on  the  altar  of  science.  You 
sacrifice  your  securities  for  a  microscope,  and  you 
sleep  in  your  office  for  the  luxury  of  working  for 
nothing!  Don't  suppose  you  get  much  practice, — 
too  preocciipied,  I  should  say." 

Tom  mounted  slowly  to  his  rooms.  He  was  think- 
ing that  Stuyvesant  must  be  an  uncommonly  good 
fellow. 

" But  he  's  given  her  up,"  he  told  himself.  "He  's 
transferring  his  affections  to  the  streptococcus 
germ!"  Tom's  sense  of  humor  was  not  abnormally 
developed,  but  this  view  of  the  matter  struck  him 
as  funny. 

And  after  all,  poor  Stuyvesant,  what  better  could 
he  do?  He  had  n't  any  little  chap  to  keep  him 
going!  And  here  Tom,  lightly  dismissing  the  image 
of  his  less  fortunate  friend,  took  from  his  overcoat 
pocket  some  half-dozen  brightly  decorated  advertise- 
ment cards  which  he  had  carefully  gleaned  from  the 
day's  mail.  He  examined  them  gravely,  and  he  re- 
joiced much  to  discover,  depicted  on  one  of  them, 
Arthur's  latest  passion,  a  sailor  boy,  endeavoring, 
somewhat  ineptly,  to  call  attention  to  the  claims  of 
the  "Queen  of  Cereals."  One  by  one  the  cards  were 
returned  to  his  pocket,  with  sentiments  of  satisfac- 
tion differing  only  in  degree,  until  at  last  a  specimen 


482  Katherine  Day 

turned  up  on  which  the  French  tongue  predominated. 
The  single  word  parfumerie  was  enough  to  seal 
the  fate  of  the  violet-strewn  appeal  for  trade.  It 
was  summarily  torn  in  two,  and  cast  into  the  waste- 
paper  basket. 

"Thank  heaven!"  the  ruthless  censor  growled, 
under  his  breath :  "  He  's  outgrowing  that  gibberish ! " 
Whence  it  will  be  seen  that  Tom's  pride  in  his  son's 
linguistic  accomplishments  had  suffered  a  check. 
Could  it  be  that  the  child's  innocent  f dux-pas  on  the 
occasion  of  their  meeting  in  Paris  still  rankled? 

There  was  little  to  remind  Tom  of  that,  or  indeed 
of  Paris  or  its  inhabitants,  native  or  foreign.  Winny, 
being  no  longer  under  bonds  to  send  a  weekly  letter, 
was  taking  their  correspondence  very  easily.  In  fact, 
her  signature  appeared  more  frequently  upon  a  bank- 
er's draft  than  upon  any  more  personal  document. 

Tom  answered  her  letters  no  less  punctiliously 
than  he  honored  the  drafts.  He  always  told  her  a 
great  deal  about  Arthur,  and  he  also  never  failed  to 
have  the  boy  scrawl  a  time-honored  bit  of  hiero- 
glyphic somewhere  on  the  margin  in  red  or  blue  pen- 
cil, and  imprint  a  kiss  thereon.  He  did  not  wish 
them  to  forget  one  another,  Winny  and  Arthur,  and 
he  sometimes  felt  as  if  the  mother  needed  almost  as 
much  prompting  as  the  boy.  No,  they  must  not  be 
allowed  to  forget  one  another,  and  therefore  the  let- 
ters were  invariably  answered  by  return  mail. 

It  cannot,  however,  be  claimed  that  Tom  ever  rose 
to  the  height  of  issuing  an  extra.  It  was  Katherine 
who  did  that.  She  never  caught  the  smallest  glimpse 
of  the  boy,  walking  with  his  nurse  in  the  street,  or 
sitting  beside  Peter  on  the  box  of  his  grandmother's 
carriage,  without  sending  Winny  a  minute  descrip- 


Readjustments  483 

tion  of  his  appearance  and  behavior;  and,  when  she 
had  been  spending  a  day  with  her  grandmother. 
Katherine  invariably  devoted  a  good  part  of  her  even- 
ing to  telling  the  voluntary  exile  everything  which 
a  mother  must  long  to  know. 

Winny  seemed  not  all  unmindful  of  these  favors. 
She  wrote  Katherine  many  letters  on  exceedingly 
thin  note-paper,  a  good  deal  crossed,  and  once  she 
sent  her  a  piece  of  point-lace  in  a  newspaper  which 
was  unfortunately  confiscated  as  contraband. 

Tom,  when  Winny  wrote  him  about  it,  replied  that 
he  was  glad  of  it,  and  invited  her  to  send  her  next  offer- 
ing through  legitimate  channels  and  allow  him  to 
pay  duty,  decently  and  in  order.  At  which  Winny 
was  so  offended  that  she  favored  him  with  three 
drafts  before  writing  again.  This  tacit  expression 
of  displeasure  was  the  limit,  however.  Her  next 
letter  was  as  friendly,  and  no  more  friendly,  than  its 
predecessors.  For  Winny  prided  herself  upon  being 
always  a  lady, — wherein  Grandmother  Day  thought 
she  perceived  a  negation  of  the  claim. 

And  so  the  winter  passed  happily  and  busily  for 
our  young  people,  and  it  would  have  seemed  as  if  the 
storms  of  youth  were  to  fret  no  more.  From  Archie 
came  satisfactory  letters,  more  frequent  too  than 
they  used  to  be,  and  this  was  in  itself  a  gain;  for,  if 
he  was  a  somewhat  capricious  correspondent,  he  was 
almost  invariably  felicitous.  Furthermore,  he  had 
been  recently  promoted  in  the  service,  and  had  not 
scorned  to  mention  the  circumstance.  The  promo- 
tion was  one  thing,  but  the  fact  that  Archie  took 
pride  in  it  was  more  significant  still,  and  a  particu- 
larly delightful  communication  from  him,  received 
that  day,  doubtless  played  an  important  part  in 


484  Katharine  Day 

Katherine's  excellent  spirits  on  a  certain  evening  in 
early  March  when  she  was  staying  with  the  Glynns. 
It  was  the  second  day  of  her  visit,  and  she  had  been 
devoting  the  twilight  hour  to  the  entertainment  of 
her  young  cousins.  Although  Jack  was  a  sopho- 
more, just  recovering  from  the  strain  of  the  mid- 
year's, and  although  Sallie  the  baby  had  meanwhile 
arrived  at  pig-tails  and  common  fractions,  these 
young  persons  were  nevertheless  unmistakably  iden- 
tical with  Katherine's  cronies  of  seven  years  ago,  who 
had  displayed  such  critical  interest  in  the  classic  dog 
in  the  manger,  and  who  had  so  frankly  resented  the 
tax  put  upon  their  credulity  by  the  casual  resurrec- 
tion of  an  orphan 's  mother.  Katherine  had,  now,  as 
then,  a  gift  at  discovering  diversions  in  which  young 
people  of  assorted  ages  could  unite,  and  to-day  as 
they  entered  with  much  zest  into  a  new  round  game 
which  she  had  half  learned,  half  invented,  for  their 
delectation,  she  found  herself  wondering  whether  it 
was  really  true  that  every  scrap  of  bone  and  tissue  is 
renewed  once  in  seven  years.  Well,  then,  that  only 
went  to  show  of  what  secondary  importance  the  bone 
and  tissue  must  be,  since  the  type  was  so  persistent. 
Now  as  then,  Jack  liked  to  sprawl  on  the  hearth-rug, 
and  if  his  setter-pup,  grown  to  dog's  estate,  was  at 
the  moment  imbibing  learning  in  the  classic  shades 
of  Harvard,  evidences  of  his  existence  were  discern- 
ible in  the  shape  of  sundry  reddish  hairs  still  clinging 
to  his  master's  garments.  Nor  had  Nannie  become 
any  less  literal-minded,  nor  Teddy  less  demonstra- 
tive, nor  Loulie  less  demure.  It  seemed  as  if  none 
of  them  had  changed  as  much  as  she  herself  had  done, 
Katherine  reflected;  and,  with  a  sudden  and  quite 
unusual  turn  of  introspection,  she  found  herself 


Readjustments  485 

hoping  that  they  might  be  spared  certain  trans- 
mogrifying processes  through  which  she  had  been  put. 
Now,  however,  the  process  was  over  and  done  with, 
and,  really!  she  believed  that  she  was  enjoying  the 
game  as  much  as  any  of  them. 

And  even  before  the  shadow  of  the  dog  in  the 
manger  had  quite  vanished  from  her  mental  horizon, 
the  conventional  name  of  his  human  prototype  was 
announced.  Mr.  McLean  desired  to  see  Miss  Day  a  mo- 
ment in  the  hall.  No;  he  would  not  come  up-stairs, 
he  would  not  even  go  into  the  drawing-room.  And 
Katherine,  with  anxious  thoughts  of  her  grand- 
mother, hastened  down  the  stairs. 

"  I  suppose  I  am  an  awful  fool  to  bother  you,  Kath- 
erine!" Tom  cried,  before  she  had  reached  the  lower 
landing.  "I  don't  suppose  it's  serious — really. 
But — it  's  the  boy;  he  's  ill.  Will  you  come  out?" 

A  few  minutes  later  they  were  in  the  carriage,  driv- 
ing rapidly  out  of  town,  Peter  for  once  consenting  to 
urge  his  horses  to  their  full  speed. 

"It  seemed  only  a  cold  until  yesterday  morning," 
Tom  was  saying,  "and  then  the  doctor  said  bron- 
chitis,— and  I  got  a  nurse." 

" Oh,  why  did  n't  you  send  for  me  at  once?" 

"I  could  n't  bear  to  bother  you, — just  now,  too, 
when  you  have  n't  had  a  vacation  for  so  long.  But 
he  hates  the  nurse,  and  he  won't  do  anything  for  her. 
She  's  a  good  sort,  too;  but  he  was  always  shy  of 
strangers,  and — well,  to-night  he  's  worse." 

"  He  must  be  worse  before  he  can  be  better,"  Kather- 
ine said,  cheerfully;  and  then  they  both  fell  silent  that 
the  consoling  thought  might  find  fit  entertainment. 

But  presently  Tom  pulled  a  white  envelope  out 
of  his  pocket. 


486  Katherine  Day 

"I  cabled  to  Winny  yesterday,"  he  explained, 
with  a  sudden  harsh  constraint;  "and  this  is  her 
answer." 

Katherine  took  the  paper  and  read  it  by  the  fitful 
light  of  passing  street  lamps. 

"  Impossible.     Send  for  Katherine." 

The  perusal  of  those  four  words  proved  a  curiously 
long  undertaking; — perhaps  because  the  light  from 
the  street  lamps  was  but  intermittent. 

But  at  last:  "Then  you  asked  her  to  come?"  she 
ventured. 

"Yes:  I  cabled  quite  explicitly.  It  was  a  distinct 
summons." 

"I  'm  glad  she  thought  of  me,"  said  Katherine, 
gently.  "You  might  have  waited  even  longer." 

"No,  I  should  not  have  waited  longer. — It  was 
time  you  came." 

And  so  it  was.  When,  at  last,  Katherine  stood 
beside  the  child,  lying  in  the  big  bed,  clutching,  with 
a  small,  feverish  hand  his  beloved  snow-shovel; — 
when  she  saw  the  bright  spot  of  scarlet  on  one  cheek, 
when  she  heard  the  quick,  difficult  breathing, — there 
needed  no  interchange  of  glances  with  the  nurse  to 
quicken  her  perception  of  the  truth. 

Grandmother  Day  was  there,  calm  and  efficient, 
betraying  no  anxiety.  She  had  just  been  feeding  the 
boy.  A  glance  at  the  wise  old  face  sufficed  to  show 
that  she  was  practising  at  eighty  her  lifelong  pre- 
cept: "Hope  for  the  best, — prepare  for  the  worst." 

Tom  watched  Katherine  with  eyes  that  searched 
her  soul. 

"Pretty  serious,  is  n't  it?"  he  whispered,  hoarsely, 


Readjustments  487 

— yet  as  if  he  dared  her  to  answer  in  the  affirmative. 
His  face,  more  clearly  seen  than  in  the  carriage,  had 
grown  old  and  gray. 

"We  can  tell  better,  to-morrow,"  Katherine  an- 
swered. "  All  symptoms  are  more  alarming  in  a  little 
child,  but — they  usually  throw  them  off." 

"Thank  God  for  that!" — and  Tom's  voice,  as  he 
spoke  the  words,  had  the  wonderful  organ-note  of 
feeling  that  comes  from  the  deep  places  of  the  soul. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    LITTLE   SOLDIER 

"Your  hopes  and  fears,  so  blind  and  yet  so  sweet, 
With  death  about  them." 

BUT  Arthur  was   very,  very  ill, — how  ill  became 
more  apparent  as  the  long  hours  of  the  night 
wore  away. 

The  doctor  had  looked  in  toward  ten  o'clock, — his 
third  visit  that  day, — and  had  confirmed  Katherine 
in  the  great  dread  which  she  would  not  before  admit 
even  to  the  nurse.  The  mischief  had  indeed  worked 
its  way  down;  there  was  no  more  talk  of  bronchitis. 
When  Tom  heard  the  ominous  word, — pneumonia, — • 
he  flinched,  visibly,  as  the  bravest  must  when  struck 
near  the  heart.  But  he  steadied  himself  at  once. 
Katherine  had  just  lifted  the  child  so  that  his  little 
head  was  supported  on  her  arm.  The  change  of 
position  seemed  to  give  him  relief.  Ah!  Katherine 
understood, — Katherine  had  the  instinct,  the  power. 
It  was  something  that  no  mere  training  could  bestow, 
that  gift  of  the  healer  that  was  a  part  of  Katherine's 
very  nature.  How  vital  and  yet  how  restrained 
was  her  every  act!  How  different  from  the  zealous 
ministrations  of  that  unexceptionable  recruit  from 
the  Bureau  of  Nurses  whom  Arthur  would  none 
of! 


The  Little  Soldier  489 

Tom  did  not,  however,  dismiss  the  nurse;  she  would 
be  a  useful  subordinate, — one  that  Katherine  would 
know  how  to  employ.  And  if  the  acquiescence  of  the 
deposed  was  at  the  outset  a  trifle  reluctant,  yet  their 
vigil  was  not  far  spent  before  it  became  evident  that 
she  had  yielded  to  this  colleague  of  hers, — so  gently 
bred,  yet  so  efficient, — an  unconditional  surrender. 

The  hours  of  the  night  passed  slowly,  so  slowly  that 
they  seemed  a  lifetime,  utterly  dissevered  from  any 
previous  existence.  Yet  there  was  no  monotony; 
the  patient  required  constant  attention.  There  was 
the  frequent  nourishment  and  stimulant,  the  repeated 
taking  of  the  pulse,  the  incessant  shifting  of  position. 
Every  little  while  the  child  was  warmly  wrapped 
about  and  carried  in  his  father's  arms,  up  and  down 
the  big  square  chamber.  And  when  Tom  felt  the 
weight  of  the  sturdy  little  body,  when  the  heavy  head 
drooped  on  his  shoulder,  he  was  consoled  and  re- 
assured. There  must  be  staying  power  in  that  tough 
little  frame;  there  was,  there  should  be, — ah!  there 
should  be! — a  constraining  force  in  his  own  strong 
arms!  How  could  the  little  body  ever  slip  from 
them?  How  could  the  little  soul  ever  elude  that 
infinitely  more  tenacious  hold  of  a  great  love? 

But  presently  the  "  little  chap  "  would  weary  of  the 
motion,  the  breath  would  become  short  again,  and 
difficult,  and  his  father  would  lay  him  gently  back 
among  the  pillows,  trusting  him  to  the  strong,  tender 
hand  that  knew  so  well  its  gentle  office. 

From  time  to  time  they  talked  a  bit,  and  that 
seemed  to  ease  the  strain. 

" Have  you  ever  had  a  case  like  this?"  Tom  asked, 
when,  for  a  few  minutes,  the  boy  had  fallen  into  a 
restless  slumber. 


490  Katherine  Day 

"Oh,  yes!  I  have  taken  care  of  several  little  chil- 
dren like  that  this  very  winter." 

"And  did — "  Tom  hesitated  and  stammered  like 
a  guilty  schoolboy, — "did  any  of  them  get  well?" 

"They  all  got  well,  "said  Katherine,  deftly  straight- 
ening the  coverlet  as  the  child  tossed  and  turned  in 
his  sleep.  "  One  of  them,  a  delicate  little  fellow, 
younger  than  Arthur,  was  worse  than  this.  And 
everything  seemed  against  him.  There  was  a 
wretched  inheritance,  and  he  had  never  been  half 
nourished,  and  the  house  was  noisy,  and  draughty 
with  bad  air.  But  he  pulled  through." 

"How  long  did  it  last?" 

"The  worst  was  over  in  four  days." 

"Four  days!     Why,  that's  an  eternity!" 

"Yes,"  Katherine  assented,  "it  is  an  eternity!" — 
and  Tom  blessed  her  for  not  disputing  him. 

Once,  in  the  night,  Grandmother  Day  looked  in,  a 
strange,  unfamiliar  figure,  in  her  night-cap  and  her 
long,  flowing  double-gown. 

"Katherine  says  she  had  a  case  worse  than  this," 
Tom  told  her.  "A  seedy  little  beggar,  too,  without 
any  constitution.  But  he  pulled  through.  And 
Arthur  's  tough  as  any  little  pine  knot.  The  doctor 
said  that,  the  first  day,  Grandmother!" — and  Tom 
looked  prepared  to  wrest  confirmation  from  her  lips, 
should  they  dare  to  hesitate. 

"It  's  a  strong  little  man,"  Grandmother  Day  as- 
sented, taking  the  bit  of  a  clenched  fist  in  her  own 
wrinkled  hand;  "and — children  are  wonderful!" — 
But  she  did  not  feel  the  confidence  she  expressed, 
and  she  was  glad  when  the  morning  came  and  she 
could  take  her  turn  in  the  sick-room. 

"You  were  right,  Katherine,"  she  said,  once,  as 


The  Little  Soldier  491 

she  sat  watching  her  granddaughter, — for  Katherine 
had  not  gone  to  rest  as  the  nurse  had  prudently  con- 
sented to  do.  "Experience  won't  take  the  place  of 
training.  You  're  a  better  nurse  than  ever  I  was, 
for  all  my  bragging." 

"They  've  learned  things  since  then,  Grand- 
mother," Katherine  answered,  with  affectionate 
loyalty;  "but  no  one  ever  made  me  take  my  medi- 
cine so  easily  as  you  did  that  time  when  I  had  the 
measles.  I  often  think  of  it  when  children  are 
troublesome." 

During  the  morning,  Arthur  seemed  very  bright, 
although  the  fever  burned  steadily  and  the  pulse 
hurried  faster.  He  ordered  them  about  with  much 
spirit,  making  many  demands  upon  "Kath-rine," 
whose  name  he  had  always  pronounced  with  that  bit 
of  a  hiatus  in  the  middle  that  had  marked  his  first 
attempt.  He  invited  her  to  tell  him  stories;  he  was 
very  severe  with  "Gamma"  for  refusing  to  regale 
him  with  molasses  and  water, — the  which  old- 
fashioned  remedy  had  been  administered,  to  his  ex- 
treme delight,  on  the  day  when  he  first  took  cold, 
— and  he  commanded  his  father,  in  no  uncertain 
terms,  to  lift  him  up,  or  to  lay  him  down,  or  to  fetch 
him  his  various  toys.  He  seemed  to  take  special 
satisfaction  in  exhibiting  his  newly  acquired  ascend- 
ency over  this  ultimate  authority,  and  more  than 
once  his  meek  attendants  were  stirred  to  that  laughter 
which  is  so  perilously  near  to  tears. 

"  I  wish  he  would  take  to  his  steamboat  or  his  rag- 
doll,"  Tom  fretted,  when  the  child  had  one  by  one 
discarded  all  the  rest  in  favor  of  his  miniature  shovel, 
with  which  it  pleased  him  to  make  futile  digs  among 
the  bed-clothes.  "  I  feel  as  if  it  were  that  shovel  that 


492  Katherine  Day 

did  the  mischief.  He  was  playing  in  the  snow  half 
the  day  on  Monday." 

"  He  had  been  playing  in  the  snow  half  the  winter," 
Grandmother  Day  remonstrated.  "There  was  no 
unusual  exposure.'' 

"Then  what  was  it?"  Tom  demanded,  fiercely.  If 
only  it  had  been  some  tangible  thing  that  he  could 
wreak  his  vengeance  on! 

"It  was  something  in  the  air,"  the  grandmother 
answered,  while  a  sibyline  speculation  glimmered  in 
her  far-seeing  eyes.  "Who  knows?  A  germ,  per- 
haps young  Stuyvesant  would  say." — And  Tom 
thought  of  the  things  he  had  seen  through  Paul's 
microscope,  the  tiny  shreds  and  dots,  blue  on  a  red- 
dish ground,  and  he  shuddered  in  his  soul. 

Presently  Tom  stood  at  the  window,  looking  out. 

"Come  here,  a  minute,"  he  said  to  Katherine  who 
was  bending  over  the  spirit  lamp.  "  Do  you  see  that 
little  hump  in  the  snow  under  the  maple  tree?" 

"Yes,  I  see  it." 

"That  was  a  fort  the  little  chap  was  building  on 
Monday.  It  was  a  capital  little  fort,  with  holes  for 
the  guns.  I  wonder  what  put  it  into  his  head." 

"Teddy  was  out  here  Saturday,"  Mrs.  Day  sug- 
gested. "He  worships  Teddy,  you  know.  He  must 
have  got  the  idea  from  him." 

"Like  as  not,"  Tom  agreed.  Then,  as  Katherine 
turned  to  watch  the  lamp:  "He  '11  be  disappointed 
when  he  finds  it  has  tumbled  to  pieces." 

But  Katherine  knew  that  the  transient  March  snow 
would  be  gone  long  before  the  boy  could  be  out  again. 
And  when,  that  night,  the  child's  other  cheek  had 
flushed  scarlet  she  ceased  to  think  of  dates  and 
seasons. 


The  Little  Soldier  493 

"You  mustn't  watch  a  second  night  "  Tom  pro- 
tested, when  evening  came,  and  it  was  clear  that  his 
cousin  had  no  thought  of  going  to  bed.  "It  will 
never  do; — I  can't  have  it!" 

"Why  not?  I  have  often  done  more  than  that  for 
a  stranger's  child.  But  you?  You  're  not  hardened 
to  it.  Won't  you  try  to  sleep  to-night?" 

"I  would,  if  it  were — a  stranger's  child!"  Tom 
answered,  gruffly. 

But  he  did  sleep  at  intervals,  sitting  in  a  big  arm- 
chair, where,  as  often  as  he  opened  his  eyes,  he  could 
see  the  boy.  And  always  he  saw  Katherine  too,  mov- 
ing softly  about  the  room  in  the  shaded  light,  bending 
over  the  child,  speaking  in  low  tones  to  the  nurse. 
Tom  would  rouse  himself,  and  ask  to  be  allowed  to 
do  something;  and  sometimes  she  would  let  him  carry 
the  child  about  the  room.  But  oftener  she  told  him 
there  was  nothing, — he  had  better  rest  and  keep  his 
strength  against  the  time  when  the  boy  should  be 
calling  for  him. 

"Yes,"  Tom  answered,  once,  with  a  stubborn  op- 
timism that  hurt  worse  than  despondency, — "yes, 
they  're  apt  to  be  exacting  when  they  're  convales- 
cing. I  've  always  heard  that." 

Then,  as  he  felt  his  strong  frame  succumbing  again 
to  the  strong  necessity,  he  would  curse  himself  for 
a  stolid,  unfeeling  block, — and  again  he  would  sleep 
and  wake,  and  always  when  he  awoke,  Katherine  was 
there,  alert  and  efficient;  and  the  nurse,  refreshed  by 
a  long  day's  sleep,  could  be  seen  moving  about,  silent 
and  intelligent,  like  a  gray  familiar,  meekly  doing  a 
conjuror's  bidding. 

The  next  day  the  child  became  more  talkative,  and 
at  times  he  appeared  deceptively  bright  and  vigorous; 


494  Katherine  Day 

but  now  and  again,  when  he  babbled  French  phrases, 
they  knew  that  his  mind  wandered.  Tom  winced 
inwardly  as  often  as  the  baby  speech  fell  into  that 
redoubted  "gibberish." 

And  on  the  third  evening  Tom  no  longer  urged 
Katherine  to  rest.  He  could  not  have  let  her  go, — 
any  more  than  he  himself  could  have  yielded  then  to 
sleep.  The  poor  little  soldier,  who  had  built  his  snow 
fort  so  pluckily,  had  come  to  his  last  ditch,  and  he 
had  nothing  left  to  fight  with. 

They  watched  and  wrestled  for  the  life  that  had 
burned  with  such  a  gay,  heart-warming  flame  for  four 
happy  years;  but  the  faint,  uneven  pulse  was  hurry- 
ing, hurrying  to  be  still.  All  night  they  plied  him 
with  nourishment,  with  stimulants, — if  perchance 
the  valiant  little  spirit  might  yet  rally  to  the  support 
of  the  laboring,  fainting  breath. 

Grandmother  Day  sat  with  them  through  those 
hours  that  were  neither  long  nor  short, — as  eternity 
is  neither  long  nor  short, — and  sometimes  Aunt  Fanny 
could  be  seen,  as  in  a  dream,  hovering  on  the  outskirts. 
They  admitted  nothing  to  one  another,  these  desperate 
watchers.  Did  they  dare  to  hope?  Did  they  dare  to 
fear  ?  And  was  it  faith ,  or  was  it  a  blind  amaze ,  that  let 
them  live,  when  at  last  the  little  soul  slipped  away 
and  the  very  foundations  rocked  with  its  flitting? 

He  died  in  his  father's  arms,  the  "little  chap." 

"Arthur!"  Tom  whispered,  bending  close  above 
him,  as  the  painful  breath  grew  shorter  still  and 
feebler.  Was  it  the  sheer  agony  of  that  stifled  cry 
that  pierced  to  the  baby  soul  just  poised  for  flight? 

"Papa!"  the  ebbing  breath  returned, — "papa!" 

And,  when  the  breath  had  ceased,  Tom  rose  and 
walked  the  room, — up  and  down,  up  and  down, — the 


The  Little  Soldier  495 

lifeless  head  against  his  breast,  the  still  lips  parted  in 
that  last  dear  word,  the  unconscious  valediction  of  a 
faithful  little  comrade. 

Not  until  the  white  dawn  entered  at  the  windows, 
paling  the  yellow  gaslight,  did  Tom  surrender  the 
little  form  to  Katherine,  and,  as  she  took  to  her  heart 
the  piteous  burden,  she  saw  those  empty  arms  .drop 
nerveless,  as,  with  hanging  head  and  lagging  step, 
Tom  left  the  room. 


CHAPTER  XI 

SMOULDERINC.    EMBERS 
"Love,  wrong,  and  pain,  what  see  I  else  around?" 

IT  was  evening,  and  Katherine  sat  in  her  little  parlor, 
thinking  of  Tom.  She  had  thought  of  nothing 
else  for  ten  days  past;  she  felt  as  if  she  should  never 
think  of  anything  else  as  long  as  she  lived.  And 
always  she  saw  him  pacing  the  floor  with  the  dying 
child  in  his  arms. 

The  days  that  had  followed  immediately  upon  that 
night  had  left  scarcely  any  impression  on  her  mind. 
Tom,  slipping  out  of  the  house  the  first  morning,  to 
attend  to  the  necessary  business  of  the  moment,  re- 
maining away  till  they  had  finished  their  dreary  meal ; 
Tom,  discussing  with  his  grandmother  quite  clearly 
and  composedly  such  details  as  were  not  to  be  avoided, 
then  stealing  away  to  that  upper  chamber  where  they 
scarcely  dared  let  their  thoughts  follow  him!  Tom, 
when  all  was  over,  fagged  and  dull,  taking  a  spiritless 
leave  of  them!  All  this  had  become  vague  and 
blurred  to  her  recollection,  and  to-night  she  saw  only 
the  stricken  man  pacing  the  floor  with  the  dying  child 
in  his  arms. 

More  than  a  week  had  passed  since  Arthur  died,  and 
this  morning  Grandmother  Day,  always  alert  and 


Smouldering  Embers  497 

aware,  had  asked  Katherine  whether  she  had  not 
better  go  back  to  her  work;  and  Katherine,  who 
seemed,  herself,  to  have  lost  all  initiative,  had  come  to 
her  city  lodgings,  glad  to  be  alone.  And  to-night  she 
was  sitting,  her  hands  clasped  in  her  lap,  in  unaccus- 
tomed idleness,  thinking  of  Tom. 

For  Katherine,  who  had  for  years  so  guided  and 
controlled  her  thoughts,  so  governed  the  most  im- 
perious impulses  of  her  heart,  had  ceased  to  be  vigilant 
with  herself.  What  mattered  her  own  state  of  mind, 
her  own  state  of  feeling  ?  That  long,  long  effort  to  thrust 
the  thought  of  Tom  from  her  heart  would  have  seemed 
to-day  hideously  egotistical.  Nothing  could  concern 
her  now, — nothing  but  his  hurt,  his  sorrow,  the  deso- 
lation of  his  life.  What  love  could  not  wrest  from 
her,  a  love  that  for  seven  years  had  dwelt  in  the  secret 
places  of  her  soul,  crushed,  suppressed,  denied,  yet 
holding  every  approach  against  the  world, — to  pity, 
that  self-effacing  pity,  that  had  become  the  keynote 
of  her  life,  it  was  yielded  without  a  struggle.  To- 
night she  could  think  only  of  Tom  in  his  dire  need. 
She  would  fain  have  arisen  and  gone  to  him, 
brushing  conventionality  aside,  bent  only  upon  con- 
soling, sustaining,  revivifying  a  fellow  creature  in 
extremity.  And  if  she  knew  well  that  he  was  more 
to  her  than  a  fellow  creature,  that,  mingling  with  a 
natural  human  compassion,  was  a  personal  tenderness 
more  compelling  still,  she  felt  that  that  imported 
nothing, — less  than  nothing.  For  Katherine,  like 
many  another  generous  soul,  was  weak  through  her 
very  strength. 

She  endeavored,  ineffectually  enough,  to  extend  to 
Winny  something  of  that  abounding  compassion  that 
possessed  her;  and  the  better  to  visualize  those  claims 


498  Katherine  Day 

upon  her  sympathy  that  had  become  curiously  re- 
mote and  unreal,  she  drew  from  her  pocket  Winny's 
letter,  written  after  first  hearing  of  Arthur's  illness,  and 
received  but  yesterday.  And  Katherine  wondered  at 
her  own  coldness  and  indifference.  Why  should  she 
fail  here,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  to  bring  home  to 
herself  the  misfortune  of  another? 

Here  was  the  letter,  cool  and  confident,  unsuspi- 
cious of  coming  ill.  Should  not  such  unsuspiciousness, 
such  unpreparedness,  render  more  vivid  still  her 
own  realization  of  what  the  final  shock  must  have 
been?  She  set  herself  to  read  the  letter,  couched  in 
terms  of  that  conscious  infallibility  that  was  so  char- 
acteristic of  Winny, — an  infallibility  based,  too,  upon 
a  narrow,  unimaginative  logic  that  was  always  diffi- 
cult to  controvert. 

"  DEAR  KATHERINE: 

"I  write  to  you  instead  of  to  Tom,  because  you  have 
always  understood  me  better  than  he.  His  cable  came  this 
morning,  and  gave  me  a  terrible  shock.  I  prefer  to  think 
that  he  would  not  have  sent  it  if  he  had  stopped  to  reflect 
what  a  shock  it  would  be,  for  it  is  just  the  sort  of  thing  the 
doctor  told  him  should  be  avoided  if  I  was  ever  to  regain 
my  nervous  strength.  However,  I  am  willing  to  think  he 
did  not  realize.  And  indeed  no  man,  perhaps  no  unmarried 
woman,  can  realize  the  love  of  a  mother  for  her  child.  It 
seems  to  me  that  a  mother  is  really  the  only  one  that  has  a 
claim  upon  the  child.  I  never  felt  that  Tom  had  the  slight- 
est right  to  take  Arthur  from  me.  But  I  never  oppose  Tom. 
He  is  too  overbearing.  Not  in  little  things, — I  will  do  him 
that  justice, — but  in  things  of  importance  he  always  over- 
rides me.  His  cable  was  like  that.  He  practically  ordered 
me  to  come  home,— now,  at  this  terrible  season  too!  And 
where  would  have  been  the  use?  Arthur  would  have  been 
well  before  I  could  have  got  there,  or  if  there  had  still  been 
nursing  to  do  I  might  not  have  been  in  condition  for  it  for 
weeks  and  weeks  to  come.  You  know  how  a  voyage  some- 


Smouldering  Embers  499 

times  upsets  me,  even  in  fine  weather,  and  the  storms  this 
winter  have  been  unprecedented.  How  fortunate  it  is  that 
you  are  a  nurse !  For  I  am  sure  you  went  to  Arthur  at  once, 
though  Tom  has  not  taken  the  trouble  to  cable  me  that.  I 
suppose  he  is  distracted  about  Arthur.  His  feeling  about 
him  was  always  overwrought, — not  the  quiet,  deep,  unselfish 
love  of  a  mother,  but  the  exacting,  intolerant  kind  of  affec- 
tion that  wants  everything  for  itself  and  can't  bear  to  be 
crossed.  I  could  see  from  his  cable  that  he  had  quite  lost 
his  head. 

"I  wish,  Katherine,  that  when  you  get  this  you  would 
send  me  a  cable  just  to  say  that  Arthur  is  convalescing.  It 
would  never  enter  Tom's  mind  to  do  so.  He  has  not  the 
gift  of  putting  himself  in  another  person's  place,  and  he  may 
not  consider  that  letters  must  be  ten  days  in  reaching  me, 
and  that  I  shall  be  on  tenterhooks  for  news.  So  be  sure  and 
send  me  a  cable.  I  shall  be  expecting  it,  and  so  it  will  not 
be  any  shock  to  me. 

"You  see  I  take  it  for  granted  that  everything  will  go  well 
with  Arthur.  That  is  partly  because  he  is  so  strong.  He 
never  had  a  day's  illness,  and  never  would  have  had  if  he 
had  not  been  exposed  to  a  New  England  winter.  I  have 
felt  apprehensive  whenever  Tom  has  written  about  his  play- 
ing so  much  in  the  snow.  But  after  all,  he  has  a  good  con- 
stitution, and  I  do  not  mean  to  worry,  because  it  has  always 
been  my  principle  to  keep  cheerful  if  only  for  the  sake  of 
those  about  me.  So  I  am  diverting  my  mind  as  much  as 
possible.  I  am  going  out  a  great  deal  this  winter,  as  you 
know.  I  have  found  it  a  great  resource  in  my  loneliness, 
and  now  that  I  have  this  new  trouble  to  contend  with  I  do 
not  know  what  I  should  do  if  I  did  not  have  so  many  delight- 
ful friends  to  make  me  forget  myself. 

"If  you  are  still  with  Arthur,  give  him  a  dear  kiss  from 
his  poor  lonely  mother,  and  tell  Tom  that  I  will  write  him 
in  a  few  days. 

"Ever  your  devoted 

"WlNNY. 

"P.  S. — Don't  fail  to  cable  at  once." 

Poor  little  letter!  How  pathetic  it  was,  for  all  its 
hardness  and  light-mindedness, — how  much  more 


500  Katharine  Day 

pathetic  for  that!  Alas!  if  shocks  were  to  be  feared, 
how  had  that  real  shock,  that  all  but  mortal  shock 
been  borne,  that  had  followed  so  swiftly  upon  the 
first?  In  vain  Katherine  tried  to  bring  it  home  to 
herself;  in  vain  she  told  herself  what  Winny's  suffer- 
ing must  be.  A  stubborn  something  in  her  own  heart 
refused  the  sympathy  it  clearly  owed.  Where  was 
Winny  now?  What  was  her  state?  And — had  she 
written  to  Tom?  Ah,  there  was  the  real  apprehen- 
sion, the  real  terror  that  clutched  the  heart  and  shook 
the  nerves.  What  had  she  written  to  Tom? 

Katherine  lifted  the  letter  again  and  read:  "He 
never  had  a  day's  illness  and  never  would  have  had 
if  he  had  not  been  exposed  to  a  New  England  winter. 
I  have  felt  apprehensive  whenever  Tom  has  written 
about  his  playing  so  much  in  the  snow." 

Would  Winny  dare  write  that  to  Tom — when  she 
knew?  And  would  it  wake  in  his  soul  that  terrible, 
consuming  remorse  that  is  the  last  bitterness  of  the 
cup  of  sorrow? — that  remorse,  unfounded,  illogical, 
to  which  the  mourner  is  susceptible  just  in  proportion 
to  the  nobility  of  his  nature. 

Katherine  folded  the  letter  and  laid  it  to  one  side. 
No,  it  was  not  the  perusal  of  those  crisp  little  sen- 
tences that  was  to  induce  the  proper  spirit  of  sym- 
pathy toward  the  poor  mother.  Better  let  that  lie 
and  not  even  think  of  answering  it  at  present.  And 
indeed  she  might  perfectly  well  wait  a  few  days.  She 
had  already  written  several  letters  to  Winny; — she 
had  spared  Tom  all  she  could.  He  had  written  once 
after  the  terrible  cable  that  could  not  but  be  brutal 
in  its  directness, — yet  could  anything  be  less  than 
brutal,  any  announcement  of  the  brutal  fact,  how- 
ever worded?  It  could  not  be  many  days  before 


Smouldering  Embers  501 

Winny's  answer  would  come;  and,  oh,  might  it  be 
merciful!  There  was  not  much  to  be  hoped  for  from 
Winny  of  positive  heroism  or  self-abnegation, — un- 
less, indeed,  this  crucial  experience  should  leave  her 
transformed  and  clarified, — but — let  her  only  re- 
frain— only  this  once! 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  door,  and  a  card  was 
brought  in, — probably  from  one  of  the  doctors  to 
whom  Katherine  had  that  morning  sent  a  note,  re- 
porting herself  ready  for  service.  She  took  it,  with 
an  indifferent  glance, — her  work  had  become  but  an 
indifferent  matter  to  her.  It  was  Tom's  card.  Ah, 
how  glad  she  was,  and  yet  how  perturbed!  She  had 
never  dreamed  of  his  coming  there. 

"The  gentleman  called  last  evening,  Miss,  and  the 
evening  before,"  Christine  was  saying,  "but  he  did  n't 
leave  any  name,  so  I  did  n't  tell  you." 

"  Yes,"  Katherine  replied.  "  He  is  my  cousin.  You 
will  have  to  show  him  the  way,  Christine." 

As  "the  maid  passed  down  the  stairs,  leaving  the 
door  open  behind  her,  Katherine  bethought  herself 
of  the  letter  lying  there  on  the  table — the  letter  that 
Tom  must  not  see.  She  hastily  tore  it  into  a  dozen 
pieces,  and  laying  them  among  the  charred  embers, 
pressed  them  down,  out  of  sight.  The  fire  had  burned 
very  low.  As  she  rose  from  her  knees  she  heard 
Tom's  step,  and  went  to  meet  him. 

"  How  good  you  were  to  come,"  she  said, — and  yet 
she  knew  that  she  was  not  speaking  naturally. 

And  Tom,  as  he  closed  the  door  behind  him,  an- 
swered, not  less  formally:  "I  have  been  before.  I 
was  sure  you  would  come  back  before  long  to  your 
work.  One  does,  you  know.  I 've  gone  back  to  mine." 

And  so,  under  an  oppression   of   spirit,  ominous 


502  Katherine  Day 

as  the  hush  that  precedes  a  great  storm,  they  took 
their  seats  before  the  dying  fire. 

"You  came  in  to-day,  I  suppose,"  Tom  remarked, 
in  the  same  dry,  dull  voice. 

"Yes;   grandmother  thought  I  had  better." 

"You  don't  usually  have  to  be  pushed,"  he  ob- 
served, with  a  drear}7  attempt  at  a  smile. 

"Not  usually,  but — we  all  have  our  lapses,  you 
know.  I  find  I  have  grown  quite  unambitious.  See! 
I  have  not  even  kept  up  the  fire." 

"  Where  would  be  the  good?  It  's  not  a  little  heat, 
more  or  less,  that  one  bothers  about." 

He  sat  for  some  minutes  gazing  gloomily  into  the 
ashes;  then,  almost  as  if  a  ghost  of  the  letter  had 
prompted  him: 

"Have  you  heard  from  Winny?"  he  asked,  ab- 
ruptly. 

"Yes;   I  had  a  letter  yesterday." 

"Written  after  the  ninth?" 

"Yes;  it  was  written  the  next  day." 

"Could  you — could  you  lay  your  hand  on  it?" 

"No;  I  haven't  it  with  me," — and  Katherine's 
eyes  involuntarily  followed  the  direction  of  his;  but 
the  winking  ashes  kept  their  secret.  "It  came  while 
I  was  at  grandmother's,"  she  added,  with  as  near  an 
approach  to  deceit  as  she  was  ever  likely  to  compass. 

There  was  another  long  pause.     Finally: 

"Did  she  write  anything — quotable?"  he  asked. 

"It  was  a  long  letter,  and  she  said  a  good  many 
things.  But  they  did  n't  seem  to  mean  anything — 
now.  She  was  evidently  not  apprehensive." 

"No; — she  wouldn't  be." 

Tom  sat  with  his  elbow  resting  on  the  table,  his 
chin  in  his  hand.  The  lamplight  shone  full  upon  him, 


Smouldering  Embers  503 

and  Katherine  noticed  for  the  first  time  that  the 
crown  of  his  head  was  powdered  with  gray.  It  had 
not  been  so  a  fortnight  ago.  She  had  often  watched 
him,  as  he  stooped  with  bowed  head  above  the  boy. 
She  surely  would  have  noticed  that  sprinkling  of 
gray  where  the  hair  was  so  thick  and  dark. 

The  change  was  infinitely  touching  to  Katherine. 
She  attributed  it  to  sorrow,  pure  and  simple.  She 
did  not  dream  that  this  thing  that  Tom  was  under- 
going was  something  far  more  complicated,  more 
discomposing,  than  unalloyed  grief,  however  deep. 
She  never  guessed  that  these  days  of  his  great  be- 
reavement had  been  days  of  strenuous  self-conflict, 
as  well. 

In  truth,  nothing  could  have  been  more  insidious 
nor  more  formidable  than  the  assault  he  had  sus- 
tained. Broken,  disheartened,  dispossessed,  the  poor 
fellow  had  turned,  as  a  hurt  child  will  turn,  to  the  one 
being  he  loved  and  trusted;  his  nature  cried  out  for 
the  healing  of  her  hand.  Yet  because  he  was  not  a 
hurt  child,  but  a  grown  man,  a  man  of  conscience  and 
experience,  with  years  of  self-discipline  behind  him, 
and  generous  ideals  within,  he  had  laid  violent  hands 
upon  those  impulses  of  the  soul  which  seemed  so  be- 
guilingly  natural  and  right,  and  had  brought  himself, 
captive  as  he  believed  to  his  own  will,  to  render  to 
Katherine  the  carefully  guarded  word  of  thanks  that 
was  her  due.  If  he  was  profoundly  aware  that  he 
loved  her  to-day  as  he  had  never  loved  her  before,  he 
believed  that  his  love  was  sanctified  at  last,  sanctified 
in  that  vision  of  her,  that  would  never  leave  him, 
when  she  had  watched  and  wrestled  like  a  holy  angel 
for  the  little  life  that  was  his  own,  and  of  which  a 
ruthless  fate  had  yet  despoiled  him. 


504  Katharine  Day 

Tom  wondered,  as  he  sat  there  with  his  chin  buried 
in  his  hand,  how  he  could  best  make  manifest  his 
gratitude,  and  yet  betray  nothing  else, — nothing  be- 
yond the  danger  line.  He  wondered,  too,  why  Kath- 
erine  was  so  inexpressive  to-night, — she  who  so  rarely 
measured  her  words,  — she  who  had  nothing  to  con- 
ceal. She  did  not  seem  her  usual  spontaneous  self. 
Had  she  felt  a  lack  in  him?  Did  she  think  he  was 
ungrateful,  self-absorbed?  Did  she  think  he  had  not 
noted  every  instant  of  that  divinely  lovely  service 
to  his  child?  That  a  single  ministration  of  her  hand, 
a  single  accent  of  her  dear  voice,  had  been  lost  upon 
him?  He  was  a  dull,  unimpressionable  brute,  he 
knew  well;  but  did  she  fancy  him  so  dull,  so  unim- 
pressionable as  that?  He  looked  up.  Ah,  no!  It 
was  not  of  herself  she  was  thinking, — not  with  that 
face,  with  that  look! 

"I  believe,"  he  said,  feeling  his  way  carefully  lest 
he  should  lose  his  footing, — and  that  would  be  shame 
and  disaster  beyond  all  the  rest, — "I  believe  I  came 
to  thank  you  for  —  everything.  But  I  might  have 
spared  us  both  the  pains.  I  cannot  say  it.  It  is  too 
deep  down  ever  to  get  to  the  surface." 

"Don't  try,"  she  answered,  gently.  "We  don'-t 
thank  our  friends  for  loving  our  children.  We  know 
they  could  n't  help  it:  ' 

"You  did  love  him,  Katherine?" 

"Everybody  did." 

"And  you? — no  more?" 

"  I  never  loved  a  child  so  well." 

"I  thought  so — I  felt  sure!  How  could  you  help 
it?  The  little  chap!"  And  again  his  chin  dropped 
in  his  hand,  and  again  Katherine  saw  that  the  dark 
hair  was  sprinkled  with  gray. 


Smouldering  Embers  505 

She  could  not  bear  it.  There  seemed  a  hand  at  her 
throat,  strangling  her.  She  could  not  speak, — there 
were  no  words  to  fit  the  need  of  that  hour  that  had 
come  at  her  call, — that  hour  when  she  might  bring 
him  consolation.  She  could  not  sit  like  that, — dumb, 
cold,  letting  the  moments  slip. 

With  a  sudden,  overmastering  impulse,  she  rose 
from  her  chair  and  moved  toward  him.  He  did  not 
look  up ;  he  did  not  imagine  that  the  movement  con- 
cerned him.  She  drew  near  to  him,  and  gently,  ten- 
derly, as  if  he  had  been  a  suffering  child,  she  let  her 
hand  rest  upon  his  shoulder.  It  was  the  very  same 
gesture  with  which  she  had  essayed  to  console  her 
brother  on  that  evening  so  long  ago  when  he  was 
suffering,  and  at  Tom's  hands.  She  was  aware  that 
her  touch  was  a  caress;  she  meant  it  should  be. 
Nothing  was  too  much  for  her  to  give  to-night. 

"Tom,"  she  said, — and  her  voice  was  sweet  with 
the  garnered  sweetness  of  seven  years, — "dear  Tom, 
be  comforted." 

He  reached  up,  slowly,  hesitatinglv  at  first,  and 
drew  her  hand  down  from  his  shoulder, — even  as 
Archie  had  done  on  that  evening,  years  ago.  Then, 
with  a  sudden,  passionate  movement,  he  pressed  it  to 
his  heart. 

' '  Tom ! ' '  she  faltered ,  confused ,  abashed — ' '  Tom ! ' ' 
— and  she  would  have  drawn  her  hand  away.  But  he 
held  it  fast. 

"Katherine,"  he  cried,  "Katherine!" 

He  had  sprung  to  his  feet,  he  had  relinquished  her 
hand,  that  remained  lifted,  as  it  were  in  sudden  terror 
of  him.  For  a  moment  they  faced  one  another, — 
with  eyes  that  could  not  lie. 

"Katherine! — you  too!"  he  cried. 


506  Katherine  Day 

Her  arm  dropped  to  her  side  and,  moving  slowly, 
unsteadily  away,  she  sank  into  a  chair  and  covered 
her  face  with  her  hands. 

In  an  instant  he  was  by  her  side,  kneeling  before 
her,  beseeching  her  to  look  at  him, — to  forgive  him, — 
to  forget.  But  she  did  not  dare  face  him  yet.  And 
he  ?  — He  too  would  have  shrunk  from  facing  her. 
They  were  like  two  comrades  who  have  fought  through 
a  long  campaign,  shoulder  to  shoulder, — who  have 
suffered  uncomplainingly  hardship  and  privation  and 
wounds,  only  to  betray  one  another  at  last,  by  a 
ghastly  trick  of  fate,  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy. 

"Forgive  me,  Katherine!  Forgive  me!"  he  im- 
plored. "  You  did  not  know, — how  could  you? — that 
it  had  been  always,  always!  How  could  you,  dear? 
My  life  has  been  such  a  monstrous  lie!  And  you, — 
because  you  are  heavenly  compassionate,  because  you 
never  count  your  gifts  to  the  meanest  and  the  most 
miserable — it  was  as  if  you  too —  He  could  see  how 
her  hands  shook.  ' '  But  it  was  nothing, — it  was  noth- 
ing, dear!  It  was  only  pity ! "  He  was  clinging  to  the 
two  arms  of  her  chair,  that  his  hands  might  be  with- 
held from  seeking  hers — "  Say  it  was  only  pity,  Kath- 
erine!" he  cried,  again.  "Say  it  was  only  pity!" 

Then  Katherine  lifted  her  face,  and  looked  upon 
him  kneeling  there  before  her. 

"  O  Tom,"  she  moaned,  brokenly,  beseechingly — "it 
was  my  fault !  I  did  n't  know — I  never  dreamed — I — " 

"But  you  do  not  love  me!  You  never  loved  me! 
Say  that  you  never  loved  me,  Katherine! — that  it  was 
only  pity !  Say  it,  Katherine !  or — God  help  us  both ! ' ' 

She  did  not  speak,  she  could  not.  She  could  only 
look  down  upon  him  with  eyes  dark  with  pain,  dark 
with  remorse,  but  eyes  that  could  not  lie. 


Smouldering  Embers  507 

Then  Tom  got  upon  his  feet,  and  walked  to  the 
fireplace,  where  he  stood,  looking  down  into  the  smoul- 
dering ashes.  And  Katherine  did  not  leave  her  seat, 
— only  her  eyes  followed  him. 

He  stood  for  many  minutes,  looking  down.     At  last : 

"I  am  going,  Katherine,"  he  said.  "  Perhaps  I  ought 
never  to  have  come.  I  can't  tell;  I  don't  see  plainly 
any  more.  But — I  shall  come  again, — and  you  must 
see  me.  We  must  think  of  this  thing,  you  and  I,  and 
we  must  think  quietly  and  reasonably.  We  meant  no 
harm.  We  had  done  our  best — both  of  us — up  to 
our  lights.  But  we  were  looking  at  only  one  side. 
Now  we  know  both, — and  we  must  begin  at  the  very 
beginning  again,  and  work  our  way  out.  We  shall 
work  our  way  out.  We  do  not  deserve  this  cruel  thing, 
— you  and  I.  I  deserved  it,  and  I — accepted  it.  But 
you!  There  's  no  justice  in  it  for  you!  I — even  I — 
shall  find  salvation  yet  through  your  deservingness." 

Then  Katherine,  seeing  him  so  calm,  so  reasonable, 
so  like  himself,  plucked  up  her  courage,  and,  rising, 
went  and  stood  beside  him. 

"It  was  horrible,  Tom; — a  horrible  moment,"  she 
said, — and  the  shudder  had  not  yet  left  her  voice, 
though  her  form  was  straight  and  steady  again.  ' '  But 
the  years  count  for  more — one  does  not  overturn  them 
in  a  moment!  We  can  trust  each  other  still." 

"Yes, — we  can  trust  each  other,  Katherine.  And 
—I  shall  come  again!" 

He  was  gone.  And  still  she  stood  looking  down 
upon  her  cold  hearth. 

After  many,  many  minutes,  she  stooped  and  me- 
chanically brushed  together  the  gray  ashes.  There 
was  a  bit  of  glow  there  in  the  middle.  She  wondered 
whether  she  could  start  it  up  again,  if  she  were  to  put 


508  Katharine  Day 

fresh  logs  upon  it.  There  was  one,  a  piece  of  birch, 
with  the  bark  hanging  loose.  How  easy  it  would  be 
to  make  a  blaze  with  that! 

The  room  had  grown  very  cold,  but — "Where  would 
be  the  good?  It  's  not  a  little  heat,  more  or  less,  that 
one  bothers  about!"  She  could  hear  Tom's  voice, 
steady,  restrained,  as  he  spoke  the  words.  Was  it 
the  same  voice  with  which,  a  little  later,  he  had  called 
her  name — "Katherine!  Katherine!" 

"And  it  was  my  fault,"  she  whispered,  hoarsely, 
cowering  there  before  the  spent  ashes.  "It  was  my 
fault!  It  was  my  fault!" 


CHAPTER  XII 

CONFLICT 

"Into  the  truth  of  things 
Out  of  their  falseness  rise,  and  reach  thou  and  remain." 

IF  Katharine's  disposition  had  not  been  singularly 
free  from  morbidness,  the  experience  of  that  even- 
ing, with  its  sudden  shattering  of  a  wholesome  illusion, 
due,  as  she  was  aware,  to  a  lapse  of  vigilance  on  her 
own  part,  might  have  wrought  a  serious  disturbance 
of  that  hard-won  equanimity  on  which  the  single- 
hearted  rectitude  of  her  life  was  based.  In  a  nature 
as  sensitively  conscientious  as  hers,  an  excessive  and 
persistent  self-condemnation  may  prove  hardly  less 
demoralizing  than  an  out-and-out  violation  of  con- 
science in  one  of  more  facile  mould.  The  probity  of 
Katherine's  character  was  perhaps  never  so  imperilled 
as  in  that  hour  when  she  crouched  before  the  fire,  in  a 
passion  of  self-accusation.  It  seemed  to  her  that  the 
mischief  was  done,  that  the  great  admission  which  she 
had  been  betrayed  into  constituted  in  itself  the  un- 
pardonable sin. 

So  long  as  Tom  had  stood  before  her  she  had  held 
herself  upright  for  his  sake ;  for  his  sake  she  had  forced 
herself  to  believe  that  they  could  trust  each  other  still. 
But  when  he  was  gone — gone  with  the  reiterated  assur- 
ance that  he  should  come  again  —  all  her  courage 


510  Katherine  Day 

failed  her.  He  loved  her,  he  had  always  loved  her, 
and  he  knew  that  she  loved  him.  "  It  was  my  fault," 
she  lamented,  less  in  self-condemnation  than  in  self- 
abandonment.  ' '  It  was  my  fault — it  was  my  fault ! ' ' 
And  all  that  night  the  one  refrain  assailed  her  soul. 
She  had  erred,  she  had  failed, — the  mischief  was  done. 

She  had  no  abiding  faith  in  her  own  confident  asser- 
tion that  the  years  counted  more  than  that  one  disas- 
trous moment, — that  there  could  be  no  reversal  of 
their  just  result.  The  reversal  had  taken  place;  the 
years  of  self-conquest  on  both  their  parts, — alas,  on 
both  their  parts ! — had  been  annulled. 

Katherine  felt  no  single  throb  of  elation  because 
Tom  loved  her.  She  was  only  appalled  at  the  knowl- 
edge. She  saw  herself,  she  saw  him,  bereft  of  the  one 
sure  refuge  that  had  existed  in  their  mutual  uncon- 
sciousness. Yes,  he  would  come  again, — he  would 
come  again  with  the  irresistible  appeal  of  his  double 
burden  of  a  great  bereavement  and  a  great  love. 
Katherine  no  more  doubted  the  depth  and  the  reality 
of  his  feeling  for  her,  than  she  doubted  the  genuineness 
of  his  grief  for  the  child.  That  simple,  human  gesture 
with  which  he  had  pressed  her  hand  to  his  heart,  had 
been  far  more  eloquent  than  the  most  impassioned 
caress;  his  imploring  voice,  as  he  besought  her  to 
deny  that  she  loved  him,  was  more  moving,  and  more 
intimately  convincing,  than  the  most  ardent  protesta- 
tions could  have  been.  She  knew  he  loved  her,  pro- 
foundly, irrevocably;  and  she  understood  his  love. 

In  the  luminousness  of  vision  that  comes  to  us  only 
in  the  watches  of  the  night,  and  then  only  under  the 
stimulus  of  a  great  emotional  shock,  she  reviewed  the 
whole  course  of  their  two  lives;  and  the  contradic- 
tions and  inconsistencies  of  Tom's  conduct,  even  to 


Conflict  511 

the  fatal  inconsistency  of  his  infidelity  to  her,  was 
apprehended  and  interpreted  as  he  himself  could  never 
have  interpreted  and  apprehended  it  She  under- 
stood both  the  extreme  fascination  of  Winny's  loveli- 
ness and  the  cause  of  Tom's  strong  though  transient 
susceptibility  to  it.  She  knew  that  he  had  been  be- 
trayed to  his  undoing,  not  by  any  inherent  weakness 
of  moral  fibre,  but  by  a  certain  rough  guilelessness 
which  could  never  have  been  maintained  through  the 
years  of  his  youth  in  the  absence  of  exceptional  force 
of  character.  And  if  she  understood  that  fascination, 
— its  rise,  its  culmination,  and  its  swift  decline, — with 
no  less  clearness  and  sympathy  did  she  comprehend 
the  expiation  that  had  been  exacted  of  him  almost 
from  the  first.  It  was  as  if  she  had  personally  wit- 
nessed each  stage  in  that  untoward  sequence. 

She  did  not  condemn  Tom,  she  did  not  condemn 
Winny; — it  was  only  herself  that  she  condemned — 
the  hardness  and  the  lack  of  faith  that  had  repelled 
him  just  when  he  had  most  urgent  need  of  her.  She 
had  failed  him  then, — she  had  failed  him  now.  It  was 
her  fault — her  fault  that  they  stood  to-day,  face  to 
face,  exposed,  disarmed,  imperilled. 

In  vain  she  asked  herself  what  she  feared, — as  if 
forsooth  her  fears  had  been  chimerical.  She  knew 
well  what  she  feared.  She  feared  the  long,  long  strain 
of  that  mutual  consciousness  which  must  warp  if  not 
disorganize  their  inner  lives;  she  feared  that,  however 
rigidly  they  might  govern  their  conduct,  the  in- 
tegrity of  their  feeling,  that  moral  integrity  which 
ensures  sincere,  spontaneous  living,  was  lost  to  them 
forever.  And  she  feared, — yes,  in  the  intensification 
of  feeling  and  apprehension  which  came  in  the  watches 
of  that  cruel  night, — she  feared  more  definite  things; 


512  Katherine  Day 

— the  touch  of  his  hand,  the  sound  of  his  voice,  the 
very  approach  of  his  step. 

But  Katherine  was  not  by  nature  morbid,  and, 
happily  for  those  of  us  who  are  imaginative,  the  more 
distorted  is  a  vision  of  the  night,  the  more  certain  it  is 
to  pass  with  the  coming  of  the  morning.  If  Kath- 
erine had  not  slept  that  night,  she  had  certainly 
dreamed,  and  from  all  dreams,  however  terrifying, 
there  is  a  sure  awakening.  And  with  the  dawning  light 
she  awoke, — spent,  half-stunned,  but  perfectly  sane. 

She  found  that  she  could  live  her  natural  life  again, 
because  it  must  be  lived ;  she  believed  that  she  could 
meet  Tom  as  an  honest  woman  should,  because  she 
must  meet  him.  As  she  went  about  those  duties  of 
the  day  which  she  found  awaiting  her  hand  to  do, 
she  recovered  something  of  the  old  balance,  the  old 
self-confidence,  and  she  knew  that  the  visions  of  the 
night  had  been  false,  with  the  plausible  falseness  of 
exaggeration.  She  would  have  died  rather  than  have 
betrayed  herself  to  Tom, — she  would  have  died  again 
;  rather  than  he  should  have  betrayed  himself  to  her. 
But  the  crisis  had  come,  and  it  must  be  met.  If 
her  untried  girlhood  had  withstood  the  strain  of  self- 
discovery,  how  should  she  not,  in  her  disciplined 
womanhood,  meet  the  new,  the  far  more  critical  strain 
of  self-betrayal.  If  the  test  was  immeasurably  more 
severe,  was  not  she  immeasurably  stronger? 

And  Tom?  He  was  even  more  to  be  trusted,  in- 
asmuch as  his  self-conquest  had  been  greater  than 
hers.  All  that  had  been  required  of  her  had  been  a 
passive  acceptance  of  the  inevitable,  and  under  condi- 
tions, too,  of  absolute  personal  freedom;  while  Tom 
had  lived  in  bondage,  yet  loyal  to  that  bondage,  as 
if  it  had  been  the  most  spontaneous  allegiance.  She 


Conflict  513 

gloried  in  Tom's  loyalty,  she  built  upon  it  now  as 
upon  a  rock  of  refuge.  She  should  not  be  tempted 
to  fail  him,  since  he  would  never  fail  her.  Let  him 
come  and  prove  to  her  that  all  was  well  between  them, 
that  the  old  normal  relation  would  be  sustained  to 
the  very  end.  The  end!  How  far  away,  how  in- 
finitely far  away  the  end  seemed!  She  thought  of 
Grandmother  Day,  of  the  fourscore  years  of  her  life. 
How  they  reached  back  to  nearly  thrice  her  own 
years!  Her  spirit  quailed  as  she  recognized  in  her 
own  constitution  the  likelihood  of  an  equal  longevity. 
And  all  those  years,  made  up  of  days  and  hours  like 
these,  must  be  lived. 

What  was  that  the  poor  child  was  saying,  the  poor 
little  seamstress  who  had  been  run  over,  whose  pain 
Katherine  was  striving  to  ease? — "  I  've  been  suffering 
so  long,  so  long!  Why,  Miss  Day,  it  's  more  than 
forty-eight  hours  since  it  happened,  and  I  've  suffered 
every  minute!" 

"It  is  a  long,  long  time  to  suffer,"  Katherine  an- 
swered,— and  for  the  moment  she  felt  that  the  time 
was  indeed  long, — "but  you  are  young  and  sound, 
and  presently  the  hurt  will  heal  and  the  pain  will  be 
gone.  The  doctor  says  there  will  be  hardly  any 
suffering  by  next  week;  only  a  bit  more  of  discom- 
fort. Think  how  good  that  will  be!" 

"I  can't  think  about  next  week,"  the  girl  sobbed. 
"I  can't  think  of  anything  but  the  pain." 

And  Katherine  could  not  chide  her  want  of  faith. 
Did  she  herself  see  much  farther  with  her  own  more 
enlightened  vision? 

Yes,  the  years  looked  long, — those  years  that 
Grandmother  Day  had  lived, — and  the  thought  of 
them  daunted  her.  Yet  from  the  present  she  no 

33 


514       •  Katherine  Day 

longer  shrank,  and  when,  an  evening  or  two  later, 
Tom  came  to  her,  she  only  welcomed  the  chance  of 
proving  how  well  they  could  trust  each  other. 

He  was  grave  and  stern,  but  the  dejection  that  had 
so  wrought  upon  her  sympathy  had  given  place  to 
the  old  force  and  decision  of  manner.  The  hair  must 
still  be  sprinkled  with  gray,  but  there  was  nothing  to 
remind  her  of  it;  the  head  was  no  longer  bowed. 

"  I  hope  you  don't  mind  my  coming  again  so  soon," 
he  said.  "One  lives  by  strides  sometimes  and  gets 
as  far  in  a  day  as  in  a  year." 

"Yes,"  Katherine  assented, — speaking  from  her 
own  experience  that  apparently  matched  his  so  well. 
"One  understands  sometimes  what  those  mystical 
old  philosophers  mean  who  say  time  is  a  condition, 
and  not  a  succession  of  hours  at  all." 

"Ah, — but  it  is  a  succession  of  hours, — only  they 
go  at  a  slower  rate  when  they  are  heavily  weighted." 

"It  's  clear  that  you  're  no  mystic,"  she  returned. 
"And  when  it  comes  to  that,  no  more  am  I.  People 
who  work  hard  never  are." 

"Have  you  been  working  hard?" 

"Very.  My  doctors  seem  to  have  saved  up  all 
their  cases  to  spring  them  on  me  now.  Happily, 
none  of  the  patients  are  in  need  of  night  service,"  she 
added,  congratulating  herself  upon  the  casual,  con- 
versational note  she  had  struck.  "Otherwise,  I 
could  n't  do  justice  to  them  all.  One  has  one's 
limits — unluckily." 

"Yes,  unluckily, — or  luckily, — one  has  one's  limits. 
And  circumstances  have  their  limits  too."  Then, 
leaning  a  bit  toward  her,  he  said,  with  a  certain  em- 
phasis that  caught  her  attention  sharply:  "I  have 
come  to  one  of  those  limits  myself." 


Conflict  515 

His  voice  to-night  was  as  stern  as  his  face,  stern 
and  harsh, — not  with  the  old  easy  masterfulness  that 
it  was  so  natural  to  combat,  but  with  a  deliberate 
inflexibility  of  accent  that  hardly  invited  contradic- 
tion. Katherine  felt  in  it  an  indefinable  menace 
which  she  secretly  shrank  from.  But  she  answered, 
tranquilly  enough: 

"I  once  heard  a  sermon  on  holy  limitations.  It 
is  a  great  subject." 

"No  doubt,"  he  returned,  politely.  "But  there 
is  nothing  particularly  holy  about  the  limitation  I 
have  reference  to."  Then,  with  a  sullen  obduracy 
that  was  more  ominous  than  his  words:  "I  have 
simply  come  to  the  limit  of  Winny,"  he  declared. 

A  creeping  presentiment  of  ill  invaded  Katherine 's 
mind,  putting  an  unnatural  constraint  upon  her,  as 
she  asked:  "You  have  had  a  letter  from  her?" 

"Yes,  I  have  had  her  letter,"  he  answered,  coldly. 
"But  that  is  nothing.  It  happens  to  be  just  —  over 
the  limit.  It  does  not  concern  me." 

"Oh,  Tom,  does  she — " 

"Does  she  reproach  me?"  he  broke  in.  "No — 
she  explicitly  states  that  she  does  not!  She  opines 
that  self-reproaches  will  be  sufficient." 

"Tom!" 

"I  am  only  telling  you  what  she  writes, — you 
seemed  to  want  the  information." 

How  worn  and  haggard  he  looked! — and  how  dark 
the  shadows  had  grown  in  his  face!  Ah,  he  had  felt 
it,  for  all  his  disavowal. 

"Was  the  letter  all  as  cruel  as  that?" 

She  was  leaning  forward,  with  supplicating  eyes 
fixed  upon  the  stern,  haggard  face.  He  could  almost 
hear  her  beseeching  him  to  be  gentle  for  all  their  sakes. 


516  Katherine  Day 

And  Tom,  who  had  tried  so  hard  to  cultivate  urbanity 
toward  Winny,  could  not  bring  himself  to  modify,  for 
the  girl  he  loved,  the  asperity  of  his  manner. 

"Cruel?  Oh,  that  's  rather  too  much  of  a  word, 
perhaps.  It  was  at  least  mercifully  short.  I  must 
admit,  too,"  he  added,  bitingly, — "that  she  seemed 
— sorry — about  Arthur." 

"Sorry!  Oh,  don't  speak  like  that!  She  is  a  hu- 
man mother.  She  does  n't  know  how  to  say  it,  but 
— she  is  desolate!" 

"Very  possibly; — although  she  seems  inclined  to 
derive  some  consolation  from  her  mourning.  She 
warns  me  that  it  will  be  expensive.  She  apparently 
credits  me  with  sensibility  where  my  purse  is  con- 
cerned." 

As  Katherine  listened  to  this  terrible  arraignment, 
that  was  but  the  more  scathing  for  being  so  restrained, 
her  feeling  underwent  a  curious  reaction.  She  be- 
came aware  that  she  was  no  longer  on  Tom's  side. 
His  cause  was  too  strong, — Winny's  was  too  pitifully 
weak.  She  found  herself  suddenly  in  an  attitude  of 
advocacy. 

"I  think  you  are  unjust  "  she  said,  simply; — but 
Tom  saw  in  her  face  a  resistance  that  was  almost 
hostility. 

"That  may  be.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  these  details 
are  of  small  concern.  They  are — just  over  the 
limit." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

A  challenge  rang  in  the  intonation  of  her  voice 
which  he  could  not  refuse.  He  had  not  meant  to 
come  to  the  point  so  soon.  He  had  meant  to  be 
diplomatic  and  persuasive.  But  it  was  an  art  he 
did  not  possess. 


Conflict  517 

For  three  days  Tom  had  been  grinding  away  at  a 
tough  moral  problem,  and  he  had,  as  he  believed, 
solved  it.  He  had  informed  himself  thoroughly  as 
to  the  legal  aspects  of  his  case;  he  had  brought  to 
bear  upon  it  all  the  hard  sense  that  usually  charac- 
terized him ;  he  had  tried  to  study  it  from  the  stand- 
point of  another, — to  eliminate  the  personal  bias, 
— and  he  had  honestly  reached  a  conclusion  which  he 
considered  incontrovertible.  But  he  knew  that  hard 
sense  did  not  predominate  in  Katherine's  mental 
processes,  that  she  had  an  inconvenient  way  of  pierc- 
ing the  obvious  shell  of  things,  and  of  discovering 
subtleties  of  motive  and  feeling  that  had  no  place  in 
a  well-constructed  argument.  He  must  therefore 
choose  his  ground  carefully.  But,  when  she  chal- 
lenged him  with  that  direct  question,  he  knew  but 
one  way  to  meet  her, — the  old  way  he  had  always 
used  with  her,  because  she  was  good  as  a  boy, — the 
downright  way  of  the  man  who  can  fight  but  has 
never  learned  to  fence. 

"I  mean,"  he  said,  bluntly,  brutally, — "I  mean 
that  my  marriage  with  Winny  Gerald  is  a  mockery. 
There  is  nothing  left  to  sustain  it." 

"Tom!"  she  gasped,  while  an  overwhelming  pro- 
test surged  through  her, — "Tom!" 

The  horror  in  her  face  struck  cold  to  his  heart. 
But  he  would  not  recede. 

"I  repeat,"  he  said,  more  quietly, — "I  repeat — 
there  is  nothing  left  to  sustain  it." 

But  she  too  had  gathered  her  forces  in  that  instant's 
pause. 

"Nothing,"  she  said,  in  a  level,  passionless  voice, 
—"nothing  but  the  law  of  man  and  of  God." 

"The  law  of  man  is  elastic,"  he  declared,  eagerly 


518  Katharine  Day 

ready  to  meet  her  on  that  ground  which  he  had  so 
carefully  examined.  He  felt  something  solid  under 
his  feet,  and  he  went  on  with  increasing  confidence. 
"I  have  been  making  a  study  of  it,"  he  explained. 
"Our  laws  are  entirely  rational;  so  much  so,  in  fact, 
that  I  find  that  with  a  little  connivance  on  Winny's 
part, — which  I  have  the  means  to  secure, — the  matter 
may  be  adjusted  in  something  like  two  years." 

Katherine  was  leaning  back  in  her  low  chair,  her 
hands  clasped  together  with  all  the  force  of  the  supple 
fingers,  with  all  the  force  of  a  will  roused  to  desperate 
resistance.  The  light  struck  full  upon  her  face  which 
was  lifted,  her  lips  parted,  eager  for  speech. 

"And  the  law  of  God?"  she  interposed,  breath- 
lessly,— while  her  eyes  clung  to  his,  and  would  not  let 
them  go. 

But  his  glance  did  not  waver,  as  he  answered,  de- 
fiantly: 

"The  law  of  God  I  am  not  in  a  position  to  study. 
But  I  do  not  believe  it  to  be  less  liberal." 

"You  are  in  a  position  to  study  it,"  she  insisted, 
while  the  clasping  fingers  made  white  grooves  in  the 
firm  young  flesh.  "  It  is  written  on  your  conscience." 

"I  do  not  find  it  there." 

And  still  they  faced  each  other,  positive,  absolute, 
uncompromising. 

It  was  Tom  who  broke  the  silence,  after  what 
seemed  to  both  a  very  long  interval. 

"Am  I  to  understand,"  he  inquired — "that  you 
oppose  divorce , — always  ? ' ' 

"No!  No  more  than  I  oppose  amputation, —  al- 
ways ! ' ' 

"It  is  merely  that  you  do  not  consider  this  a  case 
for  amputation?" 


Conflict  519 

"Most  assuredly  I  do  not." 

And  still  they  faced  each  other,  in  utter,  hopeless 
opposition, — for  still  her  eyes  compelled  his,  as  the 
clutch  of  the  wrestler  compels  his  antagonist  whose 
withdrawal  would  rob  him  of  victory. 

Tom  felt,  uneasily,  that  he  was  losing  ground.  He 
shifted  a  bit  in  his  chair.  His  eyes  wandered  to  her 
hands, — those  wonderfully  expressive  hands  that 
were  clasped  in  agonized  protest  against  him. 

"I  wish,"  he  said,  at  last, — and  it  seemed  to  him 
that  he  was  making  a  great  concession — "  I  wish  that 
you  could  put  personal  considerations  aside  for  a 
moment,  and  show  me  your  grounds — your  imper- 
sonal grounds — for  feeling  as  you  do  in  this  particular 
case." 

"My  grounds?"  she  repeated,  while  her  heart  sank 
because  he  had  looked  away. — "  It  is  you  that —  But 
no! — don't!" — and  relaxing  her  grasp  she  lifted  her 
hand  in  sudden  deprecation  of  more  words.  "We 
can't  discuss  such  a  thing  as  that, — you  and  I." 

"There  is  nothing  that  we  cannot  discuss,  Kath- 
erine," —  and  again  his  eyes  met  hers,  but  with  re- 
newed assurance.  "We  are  wronging  ourselves, — we 
are  wronging  each  other, —  when  we  evade  a  vital 
question." 

"  I  do  not  recognize  the  existence  of  a  question,"  she 
retorted,  stubbornly. 

He  leaned  a  bit  toward  her,  persuasive  now,  con- 
ciliatory, as  he  had  meant  to  be  from  the  first. 

"That  is  because  you  think  it  would  be  an  injustice 
to  Winny,"  he  answered,  with  a  great  effort  at  so- 
briety of  statement.  "  But  you  are  mistaken.  Noth- 
ing would  suit  Winny 's  views  better,  provided  she 
could  make  her  own  terms — that  is,  in  bald  English, 


520  Katharine  Day 

provided  she  were  not  to  lose  her  banker !  I  assure  you 
that  it  is  so,"  he  urged,  taking  heart  of  hope, — for  she 
was  listening  in  silence,  at  least.  "  It  would  leave  her 
a  free  hand.  She  has  already  acquired  actual  liberty, 
but  she  would  value  it  more  if  it  were  nominal  as  well. 
She  could  use  it  more  effectively." 

So  it  seemed  they  must  discuss  this  unthinkable 
thing.  There  was  to  be  no  evasion. 

"It  is  you  who  are  mistaken,"  she  returned, — and 
it  was  evident  that  she  was  doing  violence  to  herself 
in  speaking  at  all — "You  do  not  know  Winny  as  I 
do, — I  who  have  known  her  all  our  lives." 

"Nor  do  you  know  her  as  I  do.  You  know  her  so 
little," — he  was  watching  her  face,  eager  to  note  the 
effect  of  his  words, — "so  little  that  you  will  perhaps 
be  surprised  to  learn  that  she  received  an  offer  of 
marriage  a  year  ago  from  one  of  her  French  counts  over 
there,  and  that  she  thought  it  amusing  to  mention  the 
fact  to  me." 

"Impossible!" 

"That  may  be.  I  have  only  her  own  statement  as 
evidence.  I  admit  that  it  seems  incredible.  It  must 
at  least  have  been  a  case  of  extreme  infatuation  on  the 
part  of  the — candidate,  for  the  most  superficial  inquiry 
as  to  her  financial  status — not  usually  a  matter  of 
indifference  to  foreigners — would  have  disclosed  an 
obstacle!"  He  could  see  that  she  was  taken  aback, 
and  he  hastened  to  follow  up  his  advantage.  "  How- 
ever that  may  be,"  he  continued,  "the  fact  would  seem 
to  be  established  that  you  need  not  be  at  pains  to 
defend  Winny 's  rights.  She  does  not  place  a  high 
value  on  them." 

"And  my  own?"  she  asked,  in  a  low,  penetrating 
voice. 


Conflict  521 

"Katherine!" 

"What  would  be  your  next  step — after?" 

Tom's  face  flushed  crimson,  and  those  honest  eyes 
of  his  took  up  the  challenge. 

"Do  you  fear  an  affront?"  he  demanded. 

"I  must — since  one  is  threatened." 

"An  affront  to  you?" 

"Is  not  this  whole  conversation  an  affront  to  me, 
since — since — " 

"Since  you  knew  I  loved  you?" 

"Since  you  knew — more  than  that!" 

"Katherine!" 

She  had  risen  from  her  chair  and  turned  away  from 
him,  and  now  she  was  standing  at  the  window,  looking 
out  into  a  starless  night. 

He  was  beside  her  in  a  moment. 

"If  what  you  say  is  just,  Katherine," — and  his 
voice  vibrated  keenly, — "  I  ask  your  pardon  from  the 
bottom  of  my  heart." 

She  had  leaned  her  forehead  against  the  window 
sash,  looking  down.  She  was  glad  there  were  no  stars ; 
she  could  not  have  faced  those  lifelong  monitors 
to-night. 

He  took  courage  from  her  disheartenment. 

"You  ask  me  what  my  next  step  would  be.  My 
next  step  would  be  to  place  myself  under  your  orders 
for  the  rest  of  my  life.  Don't  fancy  that  I  have  any 
illusions, — that  I  imagine  for  a  moment  that  you 
would  be  easily  reconciled, — that  I  feel  any  real  assur- 
ance that  you  would  ever  be  reconciled.  What 
right  have  you  ever  given  me  to  assume  such  a  thing? 
If  any  such  fool's  paradise  floated  before  me  yesterday, 
it  is  gone  to-day.  I  should  simply  place  myself  under 
your  orders  for  the  rest  of  my  life.  If  you  commanded 


522  Katherine  Day 

silence,  even  by  a  look,  I  would  be  dumb  forever.  You 
would  be  as  free  of  me  as  you  are  to-day — more  free! 
That  is  a  thing  you  have  a  right  to  require. — But," 
— and  here  his  manner  changed — "you  have  no  right 
to  require  that  I  should  go  on  living  a  lie.  Anything 
else  I  will  do  for  you, —  anything  else  I  will  forego! 
Only,  do  not  ask  a  lifelong  lie." 

He  crossed  the  room  and  returned  again,  his  hands 
in  his  pockets  like  a  stubborn  schoolboy. 

"And  do  you  think,"  she  asked, — while  her  voice 
shook  a  little  in  spite  of  herself, — "that  you  could 
live  up  to  that? — that  I  could  live  up  to  it?" 

"  You ! "  he  repeated  with  a  sudden  climbing  exulta- 
tion that  he  dared  not  betray.  "You,  Katherine? 
Ah,  I  would  stand  or  fall  with  you!" 

"Yes  ;  and  life  would  be  a  bitter  thing — more 
bitter  a  thousand  times  than  the  years  we  have 
been  living  through,  till  now.  Tom,  we  should 
have  purchased — not  happiness — by  a  great  dis- 
loyalty." 

"Disloyalty  to  what?  To  a  mere  convention — a 
mere  theory — -an  empty  form!" 

' '  Disloyalty  to  my  friend — and  to  your  child ! ' ' 

"  To  Arthur? "  Tom  stammered — and  she  knew  that 
the  pain  of  it  shook  him  rudely.  "To  Arthur?" 

"Is  it  not  so,  Tom?"  she  urged,  gently,  pitifully. 
"  You  say  there  is  nothing  left  to  sustain  your  relation 
with  Winny.  But  what  has  sustained  it,  till  now? 
Was  it  not  for  Arthur's  sake  that  you  have  been  so 
faithful,  so  forbearing,  so  magnanimous,  all  these 
years?  And  is  Arthur's  claim  any  less,  now  that  he  is 
— not  here — to  press  it  home?" 

But  he  had  steadied  himself  again  in  face  of  this 
pitiless  onslaught. 


Conflict  523 

"Arthur's  claim  is  less  because  his  needs  have 
ceased,"  he  said,  with  a  composure  that  was  shot 
through  with  anguish. 

"And  Winny's  claims  are  greater,  because  her  need 
has  just  begun." 

"What  need?" 

"The  need  of  comfort — the  need  of  love  and  kind- 
ness.— Tom,"  and  she  turned  and  faced  him,  fearless 
again  and  sure  of  her  cause;  "you  do  not  know 
the  heart  of  a  mother  if  you  believe  that  Winny's  letter 
is  a  reflection  of  her  real  feeling.  She  wrote  in  desper- 
ation— she  struck  out  at  you,  because  you  were  nearest, 
as  any  wounded  creature  will  do.  She  wrote  of  fool- 
ishness because  she  did  not  know  how  to  write  of  the 
soberness  of  her  grief.  She  is  a  poor,  desolate,  stricken 
child.  She  must  be  comforted.  We  cannot  leave  her 
there,  alone  in  her  grievous  need!  Look  in  your  own 
heart,  and  think  what  her  suffering  must  be!  She 
too, — oh,  Tom!  she  too  has  lost  Arthur!" 

Crossing  the  room,  slowly,  she  paused  before  a  little 
frame  where  Winny's  face  looked  out,  in  its  perennial 
girlishness  and  innocence.  Alas,  this  was  not  the 
Winny  whose  image  possessed  her  to-night!  That 
Winny  was  a  changed  woman, —  broken-hearted,  and 
in  exile.  As  she  stood,  thoughtfully  regarding  the 
lovely  face,  Tom's  voice  broke  in  upon  her  reverie, — a 
voice  gruff  with  contending  emotions. 

"  Don't  look  at  that,"  he  cried,  "it's  not  the  truth!" 

"No;  it  is  not  the  truth,"  she  answered,  while 
her  hand  just  touched  the  little  frame.  "This  is 
a  light-hearted  girl,  who  never  dreamed  of  sorrow. 
She  did  not  shut  me  out  from  her  happiness — while 
she  had  it,  poor  child!  I  will  not  fail  her  now!  Tom," 
— and  again  she  came  toward  him,  but  a  great  resolve 


524  Katharine  Day 

was  forming  within  her  and  reflecting  itself  in  her 
face ;  ' '  she  shall  not  be  left  alone  in  her  sorrow.  I 
myself  will  go  and  comfort  her." 

' '  You  ?    Katherine ! ' ' 

"What  could  be  more  natural?  I  am  her  oldest 
friend,  and  she  is  mine.  You  cannot  go  yet.  I  under- 
stand that.  You  are  too  hurt,  too  prejudiced,  too 
wronged!  Ah,  Tom,  I  do  understand!  I  do  indeed! 
You  cannot  go — yet.  But  I  !  What  is  there  to 
hinder  ? " 

Tom  stood  for  a  moment  in  silence,  his  brain  work- 
ing swiftly,  logically,  as  it  would  have  worked  in  a 
sudden  business  emergency.  He  was  trained  to 
recognize  a  strategic  advantage,  and  he  had  instantly 
concluded  that  nothing  could  be  more  favorable  to  his 
cause  than  this  step  which  had  so  suddenly,  yet  so 
naturally,  suggested  itself  to  Katherine.  He  was 
convinced  that  she  was  deceived,  and  he  was  sure  that 
nothing  could  so  disillusionize  her  as  a  taste  of 
Winny's  society  in  her  new  environment.  So 
deeply  rooted  was  his  scepticism  as  to  the  chastened 
and  regenerate  Winny  that  Katherine  had  conjured  up, 
as  it  were,  out  of  the  affluence  of  her  own  spiritual  en- 
dowment, that  he  firmly  believed  that  the  unreality  of 
it  must  speedily  become  apparent  to  Katherine  herself. 

Well  as  Tom  knew  the  generosity  of  Katherine 's 
impulses,  his  faith  in  the  ultimate  rectitude  of  her 
judgment  was  such  as  to  assure  him  that  the  opposi- 
tion which  he  considered  ill  founded,  based  upon  a 
false  conception  of  actual  conditions,  must  crumble 
and  fall  before  a  perception  of  the  truth.  Here,  then, 
was  a  chance  to  act, — to  break  through  the  entangle- 
ment of  sentiments  and  theories, — to  deal  hand  to 
hand  with  facts. 


Conflict  525 

In  a  moment  Tom  was  his  most  normal  and  confi- 
dent self.  Motioning  to  a  chair: 

"Let  us  sit,"  he  said,  "and  discuss  this  plan  of 
yours  quietly  and  in  order.  It  seems  to  me  a  good 
one,  if  it  can  be  carried  out.  In  the  first  place — can 
you  get  away?" 

"Yes,"  she  answered,  placing  herself  exactly  where 
he  had  indicated;  it  was  good  to  yield,  even  that 
trifle.  "Yes ;  there  never  was  a  time  when  I  could  do 
it  better.  I  have  had  an  understudy  this  year,  a 
young  woman,  capitally  equipped.  The  dream  of  her 
life  has  been  to  do  my  kind  of  work.  She  only  lacks 
the  means  of  livelihood.  That  can  be  provided." 

"Provided  by  you?" 

"Yes, —  for  the  present  at  least.  But  it  can't 
be  very  long  before  society  undertakes  this  thing. 
There  is  a  strong  movement  in  that  direction,  al- 
ready." 

"Capital!"  Tom  answered,  dismissing  that  subject, 
and  turning  to  the  next.  ' '  And  the  voyage  ?  Should 
you  have  to  make  it  alone?" 

His  questions  came  terse,  pointed,  businesslike, — 
and  she  answered  promptly  and  exhaustively.  The 
more  the  project  took  shape  in  her  mind,  the  more 
it  commended  itself  to  her.  Indeed  they  were  both 
so  young,  so  vigorous,  so  earnest,  that  they  could  find 
in  action  the  best  corrective  of  mental  trouble. 

"No,  I  shall  not  have  to  go  alone,"  she  replied, 
"though  I  should  not  mind  that.  But  the  Delanos 
are  sailing  next  week." 

"And   grandmother?     Would   she   consent?" 

"She  said,  only  the  other  day,  that  it  was  time  for 
me  to  go  abroad.  I  believed  I  knew  better.  But  I 
didn't — I  never  do!" — and  at  the  thought  of  that 


526     .  Katherine  Day 

unimpeachable  mentor,  her  sagacity,  her  penetration, 
they  all  but  smiled.  The  mere  mention  of  her  name 
was  like  the  letting  in  of  daylight  upon  darkened 
counsels.  Both  were  aware  that  the  strain  was 
relaxed. 

They  talked  long  and  earnestly  of  Katherine 's  plan, 
— she,  caught  up  and  sustained  in  an  atmosphere  of 
ardent  faith, — Tom,  always  at  home  in  the  consid- 
eration of  practical  details,  encouraging,  advising, 
suggesting. 

At  last  he  sprang  to  his  feet,  with  more  natural 
spirit  and  confidence  than  he  had  felt  for  many  a  long 
day;  and  Katherine,  still  somewhat  pale  and  shaken, 
rose  too. 

"Good-bye,  Tom,"  she  said, — while  her  eyes  met 
his  again  with  the  old  trustfulness.  "You  have  been 
all  that  was  generous  and  kind." 

"And  you,  Katherine,"  he  pleaded,  very  earnestly. 
"Don't  think  you  must  keep  all  your  generosity  and 
kindness  for — others.  Remember,  dear,  that  you  and  I 
are  not  the  only  human  creatures  that  have  no  rights." 

"Ah,  Tom,"  she  answered.  "When  I  write  you 
from  Paris — " 

"When  you  write  me  from  Paris,"  he  broke  in,  with 
sudden  energy, — "I  shall  answer!" 

She  shrank  a  little  and  drew  back,  daunted  by  that 
prompt  energy.  In  truth  she  had  no  heart  for  further 
conflict. 

He  perceived  his  misstep,  and  hastened  to  recover 
it.  It  would  never  do  to  lose  the  little  he  had  gained. 
She  must  be  reassured, — and,  ah,  how  sweet  a  task  it 
was! 

"Don't  be  disturbed,  Katherine,"  he  said,  gently, 
"You  may  trust  me  as  you  trust  yourself," 


Conflict  527 

Coming  a  step  nearer,  he  took  her  hand,  and  she 
saw  that  his  eyes  were  alight  with  a  boyish  good  faith 
that  was  infinitely  beguiling. 

"Remember,  dear,"  he  was  saying, — "I  am  under 
your  orders.  I  am  only  your  faithful  squire, — now 
and  always.  You  need  not  be  afraid  that  I  shall  ever 
grow  rebellious,  for  you  must  know,  in  your  heart  of 
hearts,  that  I  would  rather  be  your  squire  than  the 
sovereign  lord  of  any  other  woman  that  lives!" 

As  if  the  chivalry  of  his  soul,  come  to  its  own  at 
last,  had  transformed  his  very  manners,  he  lifted  her 
hand,  and  bowed  his  head  above  it,  just  brushing  it 
with  his  lips.  The  action  was  too  restrained,  too 
courtly,  to  be  disconcerting,  even  to  the  sensitive 
poise  of  Katherine's  mood.  It  was  only  the  after- 
vibration  of  it  that  shattered  her  composure. 

When  he  was  gone,  she  stood  a  moment  where  he 
had  left  her, — breathless,  tremulous.  Then,  as  the 
sound  of  the  closing  door  below  echoed  through  the 
house,  an  overwhelming  sense  of  desolation  seized  her, 
and,  ere  she  could  check  the  mutinous  impulse,  she 
had  lifted  and  pressed  to  her  own  lips,  for  one  swift 
instant,  the  hand  his  had  so  reverently  touched. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

FLIGHT 
*'  I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way." 

T  IKE  the  homing  of  a  bird, — urgent,  unwavering, 
L,  «trong  of  wing  and  sure  of  vision, — was  that 
flight  of  Katherine's  to  the  friend  of  her  childhood 
days.  She  saw  in  Winny's  presence  the  one  refuge 
the  world  held  for  her  hard-pressed  soul, — hard- 
pressed,  not  alone  by  the  importunity  of  another, 
but  by  the  far  more  serious  menace  of  her  own  nature 
stirred  at  last  to  its  ultimate  depths.  That  need  of 
escape  from  herself — from  the  pitiless  revelation  of 
her  own  strength  no  less  than  of  her  own  weak- 
ness— would  have  spurred  her  to  a  yet  swifter  and 
more  impetuous  flight,  had  such  been  possible. 

Happily  for  her,  the  immediate  stress  of  prepara- 
tion gave  a  sense  of  speed,  of  forward  movement, 
that  was  steadying  to  the  still  uncertain  poise  of  her 
spirit.  The  wholesome  fatigue,  too,  of  exertion  in 
unaccustomed  channels  helped  dull  the  sensibilities, 
and  tranquillize  the  nerves.  Yet  for  all  that  there  was 
a  tension  discernible,  at  least  to  the  keen  and  in- 
structed perception  of  Grandmother  Day,  and  that 
wise  and  vigilant  guardian  was  scarcely  less  thankful 
than  Katherine  herself  when  the  hour  of  departure 
came. 


Flight  529 

"You  must  take  good  care  of  her  while  I  am  gone, 
Aunt  Fanny,"  Katherine  admonished,  with  a  humor- 
ous appreciation  of  her  own  audacity.  As  if  any- 
body, forsooth,  had  ever  been  allowed  to  take  care  of 
Grandmother  Day! 

"Saucebox!"  the  old  lady  retorted,  pinching  the 
rather  pale  cheek  that  was  soliciting  a  farewell  caress. 

Then,  as  Aunt  Fanny  turned  away  to  conceal  a 
tear, — for  the  really  tender-hearted  woman  could 
never  go  through  a  parting  dry-eyed, — Grandmother 
Day  put  her  two  hands  on  her  granddaughter's 
shoulders,  and,  looking  into  the  dark  eyes,  shadowed 
a  little  of  late,  but  brave  and  steady  always: 

"It  is  someone  else  that  needs  care,"  she  said, 
gently.  "  Not  old  ladies  that  are  kept  in  cotton- wool." 

The  diffident  tenderness  of  word  and  tone,  so  rare 
on  those  shrewd  old  lips,  took  Katherine  at  unawares. 
With  a  quick  sob,  she  hid  her  face  on  the  kindly 
shoulder,  and  the  grandmother's  arms  held  her  close. 

It  was  only  for  a  moment,  but  to  both  women  that 
unwonted  crisis  of  emotion,  controlled  though  it  was, 
had  a  searching  significance.  To  the  grandmother, 
it  attested  the  severity  of  the  strain  which  she  had 
only  surmised;  in  Katherine 's  mind,  it  did  but  ac- 
centuate the  need  of  flight.  Not  until  she  was  fairly 
at  sea,  with  the  waste  of  waters  widening  astern, — 
not  until  she  could  hear  the  rhythmic  heart-beat  of 
the  engine,  and  feel  the  steady  forward  impulse  of 
the  great  ship,  straining  toward  the  goal, — did  she 
fully  regain  her  inner  poise. 

She  used  to  sit  far  forward,  where  the  deck  narrows 
to  a  wedge,  and  watch  the  tall  prow  cutting  its  way 
through  the  heaving  billows.  It  gave  her  a  sense  of 
difficulties  overcome,  of  progress  made  toward  a  safe 


530  Katherine  Day 

haven.  She  liked  it  there,  on  fresh,  salt  mornings, 
or  of  a  keen  evening,  when  the  stars  were  abroad,  and 
their  far  light  only  intensified  the  mystery  of  those 
moving  waters,  so  vast,  so  illimitable  to  the  imagina- 
tion, when  night  has  obliterated  the  low  horizon. 

There  were  usually  others  with  her, — Allan  Delano 
and  his  daughter  Grace  perhaps,  inseparable  as  al- 
ways,— or  again  some  chance  fellow  passenger,  moved, 
it  might  be,  by  the  hour  and  the  scene,  and  the  some- 
thing in  Katherine  that  ever  invited  confidence,  to 
talk  of  himself.  She  was  rarely  found  wanting  on 
her  social  side,  and  she  herself  got  much  diversion 
from  this  easy  intercourse  with  new  minds.  Yet 
nothing  of  all  this  interrupted  for  a  moment  the  sense 
of  onward  movement,  the  sense  of  a  goal,  a  refuge, 
just  ahead. 

"The  voyage  is  doing  you  no  end  of  good,"  Allan 
Delano  remarked,  one  morning,  when  they  had  been 
tramping  the  deck  for  an  hour  to  the  tune  of  a 
whistling  wind.  They  had  stopped  in  the  shelter 
of  the  deckhouse,  and  were  watching  the  sea  come 
up.  "I  never  saw  you  look  done  up  as  you  did  the 
day  we  sailed.  I  rather  think  you  must  have  shaken 
off  a  lot  of  bother  when  you  came  aboard." 

Katherine 's  face  was  aglow  with  the  stinging  wind, 
and  her  eyes  shone  clear  through  the  flying  spray. 

"That's  what  voyages  are  for;  is  it  not?"  she 
asked,  flicking  the  moisture  from  her  brow  and  lashes. 

"Yes;  they  blow  the  cobwebs  off  about  as  quick 
as  anything.  You  ought  to  have  made  that  stock- 
broking  cousin  of  yours  come  along  too.  When  I  saw 
him  standing  with  Glynn  on  the  pier  in  New  York 
the  other  day,  I  thought  he  looked  as  if  he  needed  it 
as  much  as  any  of  us." 


Flight  531 

"I  hope  he  will  come  over  before  long,"  Katherine 
answered  quietly,  as  she  steadied  herself  against  a 
coming  lurch  of  the  deck.  "  His  wife  is  in  Paris  now. 
You  know,  I  am  to  join  her  there." 

"Do  you  remember  once,  years  ago,  I  told  you  I 
should  like  to  paint  McLean?" 

"Yes;   I  remember." 

"I  would  rather  do  it  now,  than  then.  In  fact,  I 
don't  know  of  anyone  I  should  like  so  well  to  paint." 

"Why  don't  you  propose  it?" 

"I  would,  if  he  were  a  poor  man.  He  has  joined 
the  St.  Swivin,  and  I  've  made  a  point  of  meeting  him. 
But  where  a  man  is  as  well  off  as  McLean  has  the 
reputation  of  being,  one  feels  a  bit  delicate.  Besides, 
I  remember  your  telling  me  that  he  was  not  tractable." 

Katherine  smiled  assent.  There  was  something 
about  the  riot  of  the  elements  that  left  her  singularly 
composed. 

"No,  I  don't  think  that  word  would  describe  him 
much  better  now  than  then,"  she  said, — noting  with 
some  amusement,  how  Delano's  bold  moustache  had 
dwindled  in  the  dampness.  "  However, — if  it  did,  you 
might  not  care  to  paint  him." 

"No;  it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  risk  any 
modifications.  I  want  him  just  as  he  is.  What  I 
don't  understand,  though,"  he  added, — "is  how 
handling  stocks  and  studying  the  ticker  can  turn  out 
a  face  like  that.  Of  course  there  's  grip  enough,  and 
penetration  enough  to  account  for  success,  —  but 
there  's  something  in  the  cut  of  the  brow  and  the  look 
of  the  eyes  that  sticks  me.  Did  you  ever  happen  to 
see  him  when  something  stirred  him  a  good  deal? 
Something  he  believed  in, — or  did  n't  believe  in?" 

"Yes,  I  know  what  you  mean." 


532  Katherine  Day 

"Well,  then,  if  you  know,  I  wish  you  would  tell  me! 
I  've  never  quite  made  it  out." 

Katherine  was  not  conscious  of  the  slightest  desire 
to  change  the  subject.  On  the  contrary,  this  open 
discussion  of  Tom  in  his  external  aspect,  taken  together 
with  her  own  self-possession,  was  subtly  reassuring. 

"I  don't  think,"  she  answered,  balancing  herself 
with  a  free,  supple  inclination,  as  the  ship  plunged  deep 
on  their  side, — "  I  don't  think  it  's  anything  more  than 
that  he  looks — well, — supposing  we  say — unspoiled." 

"That  's  it!  As  usual,  the  simplest  explanation  is 
the  subtlest,"  Delano  answered,  clinging  to  a  friendly 
rail  that  followed  the  wall  of  the  deckhouse. 

Katherine  had  been  studying  her  companion's  face 
as  they  talked,  wondering  whether,  artist  and  idealist 
though  he  was,  he  could  show  as  scrupulously  fair  a 
record  as  Tom.  He  was  a  charming  man,  and  he 
carried  his  fifty-odd  years  jauntily  enough,  but — 
would  anyone  call  him  unspoiled? 

"What  kind  of  a  wife  has  McLean?"  he  was 
asking. 

"The  kind  to  make  an  artist  open  his  eyes,"  Kath- 
erine bragged.  "She  's  the  prettiest  woman  I  know, 
and  my  oldest  friend,  please  observe!  I  have  n't  seen 
her  now  for  a  long  time,  however,  and  I  am  looking 
forward  to  it  every  minute.  There  's  Grace,  by  the 
way,  clutching  the  rope." 

' '  Grace  ?  Why  it 's  too  rough  up  here  for  her !  What 
is  she  thinking  of!" 

As  Delano  hastened  to  the  rescue  of  his  daughter, 
Katherine  was  left  reflecting  upon  that  meeting  with 
Winny,  now  so  near  at  hand. 

It  seemed  to  her,  during  those  days  of  the  voyage, 
that  it  was  the  one  thing  she  lived  for, — to  see  Winny, 


Flight  533 

to  assure  herself  that  she  had  been  right  about  her, 
that  the  poor  child  had  at  last  come  alive.  Let  the 
pain  be  what  it  would!  It  was  better  that  she  should 
suffer, — suffer  cruelly,  bitterly, — than  that  her  nature 
should  prove  to  be  too  meanly  wrought  for  suffering. 
If  only  Winny  had  come  alive,  there  was  nothing  to 
fear; — nothing  to  fear  for  Winny,  nothing  for  herself, 
nothing  to  fear  even  for  Tom.  For  Katherine  im- 
plicitly believed  that  a  conviction  of  Winny 's  need  of 
him  would  suffice  to  bring  Tom  back  to  her, — that  his 
character  was  totally  free  of  that  levity  that  alone  can 
render  the  conscience  indifferent  to  a  bond,  once 
recognized  as  valid. 

Singularly  enough,  the  thought  of  Archie  did  not 
especially  associate  itself  with  the  subject  that  was  so 
absorbing  her  through  the  long  monotony  of  the  voy- 
age. Indeed,  so  possessed  was  she  with  the  personal 
crisis  of  the  last  few  weeks,  that  she  all  but  forgot  that 
other,  and  no  less  momentous  one,  in  her  brother's 
life,  which  had  centred  upon  the  same  vacillating 
pivot.  So  bent  was  her  mind,  her  will  so  enlisted,  in 
the  effort  to  think  of  Winny  in  but  one  light,  the  light 
of  the  present  emergency,  that  all  that  previous  his- 
tory of  broken  ties  and  hopes  betrayed  had  receded 
into  dim  unreality.  The  shock  of  revival  was  all  the 
sharper  when,  on  landing  at  Havre,  one  bright  spring 
morning,  she  found  Archie  awaiting  her  there.  Even 
in  the  joy  of  seeing  him, — and  when  had  the  sight  of 
his  face  ever  failed  to  give  her  pleasure  ? — even  in  that 
first  spontaneous  joy,  was  an  undertone  of  disquiet. 

"Why,  Archie!"  she  cried,  anxiously,  as  soon 
as  they  got  within  speaking  distance.  "When? 
How?" 

"Oh,   I  happened  to  be  in   Paris,"  he  answered 


534  Katharine  Day 

lightly.  "So  I  ran  up  to  pick  you  off  the  steamer. 
It  's  only  a  step,  you  know,  and  I  thought  I  would 
give  you  a  little  surprise. — My  sister  was  always  fond 
of  surprises,  Miss  Delano,"  he  added, — lifting  his  hat 
in  acknowledgment  of  the  introduction,  and  perform- 
ing the  small  ceremony  with  a  certain  foreign  accent 
of  manner  added  to  his  own  native  grace. 

Archie  was,  if  not  more  prepossessing  than  ever,  at 
least  more  effective;  for  he  had  acquired  an  inde- 
scribable something  that  stimulated  the  imagination. 
One  felt  that  he  had  seen  life,  but  that  he  might  never 
tell  how  he  liked  it! 

Grace  Delano  thought  him  charming,  and  very  like 
his  sister, — while  her  father  was  puzzled  by  the  un- 
likeness.  Delano  was  artist  enough  to  perceive  the 
structural  resemblance,  and  man  of  the  world  enough 
to  note  that  subtler  unlikeness  that  had  been  superin- 
duced— was  it  through  the  action  of  external  circum- 
stance, or  as  the  result  of  a  deeper,  more  fundamental 
variation?  And,  while  artist  and  man  of  the  world 
were  alike  engaged  in  conjecture,  brother  and  sister 
had  already  vanished  from  the  scene,  together  with 
whatever  problems  they  presented  to  the  curious. 

When,  at  last,  they  were  on  the  train,  speeding  south- 
ward, Archie  told  his  story,  very  simply  and  soberly. 
He  did  not  wait  to  be  questioned,  but,  satisfying  him- 
self, by  a  practised  glance  from  one  to  the  other  of 
their  fellow  passengers,  that  there  were  no  Anglo- 
Saxons  among  them: 

" I  came  on,"  he  said,  "because  Winny  sent  for  me. 
She  was  so  broken  up  about  the  boy — she  just  reached 
out  for  the  nearest  creature  that  belonged  to  her,  and 
I  could  n't  refuse  to  come.  They  made  a  bully  row  at 
the  Legation,  too,  he  added,  with  an  observant  glance 


Flight  535 

at  his  sister,  if  perchance  she  should  give  special 
weight  to  his  words. 

But  Katherine  had  but  one  thought  in  mind. 

"Did  she  write  you?"  she  asked. 

"No;  she  telegraphed.  I  believe  she  stuck  it  out 
for  several  days,  and  then  something  gave  way." 

He  had  set  his  handsome,  facile  mouth  in  a  firm  line, 
that  was  more  pathetic  than  the  most  touching  droop 
would  have  been.  His  eyes  were  rather  hard  and 
bright. 

"I  had  not  heard  anything  till  then,"  he  went  on, 
looking  out  at  the  flying  landscape.  "Supposed  the 
boy  was  sound  as  a  nut.  It  must  have  been  pretty 
rough,  all  round." 

"Yes;  it  was  heart-breaking.  But — we  couldn't 
save  him." 

The  cadence  of  her  voice  struck  home,  and  straight- 
way they  fell  silent. 

As  Katherine  too  turned  to  look  from  the  window 
at  the  green  of  the  April  fields  flying  past,  she  felt  that 
they  were  both  grown  old — and  tired — and  again  she 
glanced  at  Archie  who  was  sitting  opposite  her.  He 
was  extremely  thin,  and  the  delicately  modelled  face, 
if  not  as  haggard  as  Tom's,  looked  far  more  worn. 

What  had  it  been  to  him, — this  meeting  with  Winny, 
after  nearly  seven  years?  How  had  they  both  endured 
the  strain?  She  knew  now  as  she  would  not  have 
known  a  month  ago  what  that  strain  must  have  been. 

"How  did  you  find  her?"  she  asked. 

"  Rather  shaky.  And  she  has  not  rallied  much 
yet.  It  has  been  a  good  deal  of  a  chore  for  us  both." 

"You  must  have  been  here  nearly  two  weeks." 

"Is  that  all?  It  seems  like  two  centuries. — I  say, 
Katherine,  I  'm  glad  you  came!  You  always  did  have 


536  Katherine  Day 

a  trick  of  turning  up  when  you  were  wanted ! ' ' — and 
he  gave  her  an  affectionate  look  that  was  illogically 
soothing  to  her  misgivings. 

"I  only  wish  I  could  have  got  here  before,"  she 
returned,  with  a  grateful  smile.  "  It  seemed  as  if  we 
should  never,  never  land!  And  yet  we  came  so  fast, — 
almost  twice  as  fast  as — before,"  she  ended,  rather 
lamely. 

"A  pretty  voyage  we  had  in  '78;  didn't  we?" 
Archie  had  not  lost  his  gift  of  being  casual.  "How 
was  it  this  time?" 

"  It  was  rough,  but  I  enjoyed  it.  We  always  seemed 
to  be  going  even  faster  than  we  were." 

"Yes;  that  's  the  queer  thing  about  head  winds. 
You  always  think  you  are  going  a  great  deal  faster 
than  you  are.  It  's  well  you  're  not,  though!  You  'd 
tear  your  rigging  to  flinders!" 

Presently  they  were  crossing  the  bridge  over  the 
river  at  Rouen,  and,  as  they  looked  out  upon  the  gray 
old  city,  wearing  its  soaring  towers  with  such  historic 
dignity,  yet  with  a  grace  unimpaired  by  the  passage 
of  centuries: 

"  I  say,  Katherine,"  Archie  said.  "  I  wish  we  might 
put  in  a  little  trip  around  here,  while  you  're  on  this 
side.  Just  you  and  I,  you  know," 

"  Perhaps  we  can,  when  Tom  comes." 

"I  suppose  he  could  n't  get  away  at  once." 

"Not  very  well." 

"Tom  was  always  such  a  grind!  Did  he — did  he 
take  it  very  hard,  Katherine?" 

"Yes — he  took  it  very  hard." 

"I  suppose  he  has  more  feeling  than  he  shows. 
Most  t)f  us  do,  as  far  as  that  goes." 

"Of  course." 


Flight  537 

"Lucky  that  's  the  way  of  it!  Things  might  not 
look  so  smiling  if  we  wore  our  hearts  under  glass!  I 
suppose  now  there  has  been  pillage  and  slaughter  all 
along  the  line  here  "  he  went  on,  musingly.  Then, 
glancing  forth  at  a  sunny  meadow  half  encircled  in  a 
shimmering  loop  of  the  Seine:  "It  would  n't  look  so 
pretty  if  we  could  see  the  skulls  and  cross-bones  under- 
neath." 

"It  might  not  be  so  bad.  I  suppose  they  are  just 
turned  into  good  black  loam  that  makes  things  grow 
and  blossom." 

"Are  you  as  much  of  an  optimist  as  ever?"  he 
inquired.  This  meeting  with  Katherine,  after  so  long 
an  interval,  had  something  of  the  piquancy  of  a  new 
discovery. 

"A  great  deal  more  so,  I  think.     And  you?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  bother  my  head  much  about  theories, 
anyway,"  was  the  evasive  reply.  "However,"  he 
went  on, — and  now  his  carelessness  of  tone  seemed 
somewhat  studied — "  I  'm  glad  you  are  optimistic,  for 
then  you  won't  perhaps  so  much  mind  when  I  tell  you 
that  they  've  dropped  me  at  the  Legation." 

"Dropped  you  for  good?" 

"Yes.  My  chief  was  recalled  a  month  or  two  ago. 
I  had  been  expecting  it  ever  since  the  new  adminis- 
tration came  in." 

"But — they  kept  you  on!" 

"To  be  sure;  but  they  were  not  very  enthusiastic 
about  it.  They  did  n't  altogether  like  my  being  pro- 
moted just  before  Dixon  left,  and, — I  suppose  I  've 
not  been  very  conciliatory.  I  took  a  fortnight  off 
last  month, — without  much  encouragement  from  the 
authorities, — and  this  second  defection,  coming  so 
soon,  was  more  than  they  cared  to  stomach." 


538  Katherine  Day 

"But,  did  n't  you  tell  them  it  was  a  case  of  neces- 
sity?" 

"Well,  I  did  n't  expatiate  much, — it  was  not  a  fa- 
vorable subject.  I  just  mentioned  that  I  'd  got  to  go. 
They  hinted  that  I  might  not  find  it  necessary  to  re- 
turn, and,  in  the  course  of  time,  they  sent  me  an 
official  endorsement  of  their  little  threat." 

So,  Archie  had  really  sacrificed  his  career  to  Winny's 
whim, — as  if  he  had  indeed  been  what  he  had  called 
himself,  a  creature  that  belonged  to  her!  A  sudden, 
fierce  resentment  possessed  itself  of  Katherine.  How 
many  more  victims  were  to  be  offered  up,  a  living 
sacrifice,  at  the  altar  of  Winny?  How  many  more 
hearts  were  to  be  broken  at  her  wheel?  And  why 
were  they  all  to  lay  their  hopes  and  ambitions,  their 
welfare  and  their  happiness,  at  her  feet?  What  was 
she  herself  doing?  Leaving  her  life  behind  her,  cross- 
ing the  seas,  hastening  to  immolate  herself,  and  one 
a  thousand  times  dearer  than  herself,  before  this 
shallow  pretence  of  a  woman! 

But  soon  the  very  violence  of  her  resentment  gave 
her  pause,  and  her  conscience  took  quick  advantage 
of  the  respite.  See!  It  was  of  herself  she  was  think- 
ing, and  of  Tom,  her  more  vital  and  essential  self.  Al- 
ready her  mind  had  dropped  back  into  that  sinful 
preoccupation  that  she  was  fleeing  from,  and  Archie, — 
even  Archie — was  forgotten! 

The  train  had  stopped  at  a  way-station.  People 
were  pulling  things  down  from  the  racks  above  their 
heads,  and  stumbling  over  their  feet.  Katherine 
felt  herself  jostled  out  of  a  reprehensible  mood,  and, 
in  the  reaction  that  at  once  set  in,  she  was  almost 
ready  to  hold  Winny  blameless.  The  child  had  asked 
a  difficult  thing  of  Archie,  but  was  it  not  proof  of  a 


Flight  539 

singular  unconsciousness  that  she  should  fail  to  sus- 
pect the  severity  of  the  ordeal  she  had  subjected  him 
to?  As  for  the  complication  at  Rome, — that,  at 
least,  was  something  for  which  she  could  not  justly 
be  held  responsible. 

"Could  you  not  have  gone  back  at  once  and  made 
things  right  with  them?"  Katherine  inquired,  when 
they  were  again  under  way. 

"  Hardly.  You  see,  I  had  ceased  to  be  persona 
grata.  Everything  hinges  on  that  in  such  affairs. 
And,  besides,  I  could  n't  have  left  Winny  until  some- 
body came  to  lend  a  hand.  She  can  no  more  stand 
alone — now,  when  she  's  unhappy — than  one  of  those 
shivering  poplars  could  if  you  were  to  dig  it  up  by  the 
roots  and  set  it  in  the  wind.  However," — and  he 
threw  his  head  back  in  characteristic  disavowal  of 
serious  things, — "there  's  really  nothing  to  worry 
about,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned.  There  are  other 
ways  of  passing  the  time  besides  dancing  attendance 
upon  our  amateur  diplomats.  And,  as  far  as  Winny 
goes,  you  're  worth  two  of  me.  I  shall  be  off  again 
to-morrow." 

' '  Where  shall  you  go  ? " 

"Almost  anywhere — out  of  Paris.  I  hate  the 
beastly  hole!" 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE    LITTLE    BLACK    FIGURE 

"Ay,  dead  loves  are  the  potent! 
Like  any  child  they  used  you, 
Mere  semblance  you,  but  substance  they!" 

IT  was  a  new  and  somewhat  perplexing  Winny  that 
Katherine  found  awaiting  her  in  the  little  pink 
satin  salon  redolent  of  violets.  The  slender,  girl- 
ish figure  in  its  deep  mourning  contrasted  hardly 
more  sharply  with  the  rose-colored  setting  of  the 
room  than  with  the  still  childlike  contour  of  the 
mourner's  face, — a  trifle  wan  now  and  drawn,  yet 
not  greatly  modified  in  its  essential  lines. 

"I  'm  glad  you  Ve  come,"  she  said,  as  Katherine 
stooped  and  kissed  her.  "I  think  it  was  time  some- 
body did!" 

They  had  met  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  where 
Winny  had  been  standing  when  Katherine  entered. 
The  slight  black  figure  had  not  taken  a  step  in  wel- 
come of  the  traveller.  It  was  as  if,  now  that  the 
superficial  brightness  of  manner  was  dimmed,  no 
underlying  warmth  remained  to  take  its  place. 

"It  must  have  been  a  lonely  time,"  Katherine 
answered,  with  a  shy  sympathy  that  ventured  on  no 
further  expression. 

"Yes,  it  was — in  spite  of  Archie.  Where  is  he? 
Is  n't  he  coming  up?" 


The  Little  Black  Figure  541 

"No;  he  said  he  would  come  in  this  evening.  He 
thought  we  might  like  to  be  by  ourselves  for  a 
little." 

"Oh,  he  's  always  that  way!" — and  Winny  drew 
Katherine  to  a  seat  beside  her  on  a  fragile  gilt  sofa. 
"He  always  seems  to  count  off  his  minutes." 

She  had  not  asked  her  guest  to  lay  aside  her  coat 
and  hat,  she  had  made  no  motion  to  show  her  the  way 
to  her  room.  "It  has  been  very  disappointing, — 
Archie's  being  here," — she  went  on.  "I  thought  it 
would  be  such  a  comfort,  but, — I  think  he  's  a  good 
deal  changed, — I  don't  think  he  's  improved." 

"  He  has  changed,  of  course,  Winny.  We  all  have. 
That  can't  be  helped." 

"You  have  n't, — not  a  bit.  You  look  just  exactly 
as  you  used  to!" — and  she  gave  Katherine  one  of 
those  critical  surveys  that  misses  no  detail.  "Why, 
I  should  think  you  had  on  the  very  same  clothes  you 
wore  three  years  ago!  But  of  course  you  haven't, 
for  that  dress  is  quite  in  the  fashion.  You  did  n't 
wear  it  on  the  steamer,  did  you?" 

"  Indeed  I  did  n't!  This  is  altogether  too  good  for 
a  ducking." 

"  I  suppose  you  were  on  deck  in  all  weathers, — just 
as  you  used  to  be." 

"Yes;  I  like  a  bit  of  weather  as  much  as  ever!" 

Winny  put  out  her  hand  and  touched  Katherine 's 
glove. 

"  Why  don't  you  take  it  off  ? "  she  asked.  Her  own 
fingers  were  sparkling  with  rings.  There  was  some- 
thing about  the  look  of  them  thus  bejewelled  that  re- 
called to  Katherine 's  reluctant  memory  a  saying  of 
her  grandmother's,  to  the  effect  that  there  was  no 
breeding  in  a  Gerald  hand. 


542  Katherine  Day 

As  Katherine  obediently  drew  off  her  glove,  Winny 
asked:  "Have  n't  you  any  rings  of  your  own?" 

"Why,  this  is  my  own!"  Katherine  protested. 
"It  was  my  mother's  engagement  ring.  What  more 
could  I  want?"  And  in  fact  it  was  a  finer  diamond 
in  its  low,  old-fashioned  setting,  than  any  Winny 
wore. 

"You  never  buy  rings?" 

"Why, — no!" 

' '  I  suppose  you  save  your  money  for  the  poor ! ' ' — 
This  with  an  expostulatory  air  which  made  her 
listener  smile  an  amused  disclaimer. 

"Not  a  bit  of  it!"  Katherine  declared.  "I  spend 
a  lot  on  myself." 

"To  be  sure.  You  always  did  dress  well,  I  must 
admit,  and  that  takes  money!" 

There  was  a  rap  at  the  door.  A  tall,  sophisticated 
French  maid  appeared. 

"Did  Madame  call?"  she  inquired. 

No,  Madame  had  not  called. 

"And  Mademoiselle?  Might  one  be  of  service  to 
Mademoiselle?" 

Thus  admonished:  "  Would  you  like  to  go  to  your 
room,  Katherine?"  Winny  asked. 

"  Perhaps  I  might  as  well  brush  up  a  little.  It  was 
a  dusty  journey!" — and  Katherine  stood  up,  glad  to 
be  on  her  feet  again. 

"You  've  had  your  luncheon,  I  suppose." 

"  Oh,  yes," — with  a  rueful  memory  of  the  sour  wine 
and  still  more  sour  bread  they  had  snatched  from  a 
passing  tray.  "We  had  our  luncheon  on  the  train." 

It  was  Melanie  and  not  Winny,  who  escorted  the 
new  arrival  to  her  room  across  the  corridor. 

As  the  assiduous  maid  proceeded  to  ply  her  with 


The  Little  Black  Figure  543 

attentions  to  which  she  was  not  accustomed,  Kath- 
erine  indemnified  herself  with  a  question  or  two. 

"Madame  has  been  well?"  she  inquired. 

"Oui,  Mademoiselle.  She  has  been  well;  but  in 
deep  affliction." 

"Certainly.  But — she  has  kept  fairly  well,  all 
this  time?" 

"Oui,  Mademoiselle.  For  all  her  delicate  face,  she 
has  the  strong  mind.  At  first  she  was  somewhat 
en  negligee"  Melanie  continued,  as  she  dexterously 
unpacked  the  toilet  articles  from  Katherine's  handbag. 
"But  since  Monsieur,  her  cousin,  has  arrived,  she  has 
had  thought  for  her  toilet.  As  Mademoiselle  is  aware, 
nothing  gives  better  effects  than  a  rich  mourning.  Let 
it  be  but  chic, — it  excels  the  colors." 

Any  translation  of  the  Frenchwoman's  remarks  is 
a  gross  injustice;  happily,  however,  her  auditor  of 
the  moment  had  the  benefit  of  them  fresh  from  the 
source. 

Plain  New  Englander  as  she  was,  Katherine  knew 
better  than  to  refuse  Melanie 's  attentions,  and  the 
matter-of-course  air  with  which  she  accepted  them 
made  a  most  satisfactory  impression.  If  a  lady  who 
held  her  head  like  that  considered  herself  entitled  to 
service,  it  was  doubtless  because  she  understood  how 
to  reward  it. 

Left  to  herself,  Katherine  began  speculating  as  to 
why  she  found  Winny  perplexing.  She  had  not  said 
a  word  that  was  out  of  character.  There  was  the  old 
frank  interest  in  externals,  the  familiar  assumption 
that  if  she  had  not  got  her  dues  in  attention  and 
sympathy  it  was  the  worse  for  the  delinquents.  Archie 
had  changed,  had  not  improved;  it  was  time  the 
others  bethought  themselves  of  her.  But  she,  Winny, 


544  Katherine  Day 

could  wait.  She  was  in  the  right ;  she  was  doing  her 
part,  in  her  faultless  mourning,  with  just  the  degree 
of  pensive  loveliness  that  the  situation  required. 

And  yet,  had  it  been  so  studied  as  all  that,  there 
would  not  have  been  lacking  some  allusion  to  her 
sorrow.  Had  she  really  been  striving  for  effect,  she 
would  have  mentioned  Arthur's  name — she  would 
at  least  have  glanced  at  his  picture  which  stood  on 
the  table  with  the  violets  before  it.  And  Tom's  name  ? 
She  had  not  mentioned  that — not  even  in  censure. 
What  had  she  in  her  heart  toward  Tom  ?  Indifference 
it  could  not  be.  Resentment?  Perhaps.  Yet  when 
did  Winny  ever  fail  to  give  expression  to  her  re- 
sentments? 

There  was  a  constraint,  on  both  sides,  the  rest  of  the 
day ;  for  if  Winny  was  manifestly  suppressing  herself, 
Katherine  too,  and  from  this  very  circumstance,  was 
debarred  from  spontaneous  speech  or  action.  Her 
heart  ached  for  the  crisp,  cool,  artificial  little  mourner, 
— she  surmised  a  thousand  reticences,  a  thousand  hid- 
den pangs.  But  she  was  incapable  of  intruding,  even 
here,  where  her  mission  was  so  clear  and  authentic. 

When  Archie  came,  in  the  evening,  the  situation 
grew  even  more  difficult.  His  stay  was  short,  and  he 
talked  almost  exclusively  to  Katherine.  For  the  first 
time  in  his  life  he  seemed  ill  at  ease.  Winny  sat,  a 
little  apart  from  them,  somewhat  more  wan  and  re- 
mote than  before,  yet  with  a  certain  look  of  discontent, 
intensified  once  or  twice  to  ill  humor. 

Archie  had  been  inquiring  aboi  t  Roland,  and 
whether  old  Peter  was  still  holding  his  own;  and 
Katherine,  feeling  that  Winny  was  a  bit  left  out,  said 
to  her:  "Your  mother  came  to  see  us  the  day  before  I 
left  home.  She  was  looking  so  young  and  pretty!" 


The  Little  Black  Figure  545 

"Oh,  don't  feel  obliged  to  talk  about  my  family," 
Winny  cried,  with  a  quick  petulance.  "Pray  tell 
Archie  all  he  's  interested  in." 

"But  I  am  interested  to  hear  about  your  mother, 
too,"  Archie  protested.  "I  always  admired  her  very 
much." 

"And  we  know  how  constant  you  are!"  The  little 
sentence  shot  out  like  the  dart  of  an  adder's  tongue. 

Archie  colored,  hotly. 

"You  're  tired,  Winny,"  he  said,  with  an  appealing 
look  at  Katherine — Katherine  would  be  patient, 
Katherine  would  understand.  "  It  's  a  shame  for  you 
to  have  to  hear  us  talk  about  our  own  affairs!  We 
ought  to  have  done  that  up  on  the  train." 

"Yes;  of  course  we  ought,"  Katherine  agreed, 
emulating  her  brother's  forbearance.  "But  we  were 
so  full  of  the  thought  of  you,  Winny,  that  we  did  n't 
get  round  to  home  matters." 

"Anyhow, — I  'm  not  going  to  keep  you  girls  up  any 
longer, ' '  cried  Archie,  springing  to  his  feet  with  alacrity. 
It  was  the  first  unforced  thing  he  had  done  since  he 
had  entered  the  room. — "I  'm  such  a  night  owl,  my- 
self, that  I  'm  always  forgetting  that  there  are  such 
things  as  bed  hours. "  Then,  as  he  took  Winny 's  hand 
in  parting:-  "I  shall  go  back  to  Rome  with  an  easy 
mind  to-morrow,  Winny;  Katherine  will  be  such  a 
comfort  to  you." 

"  Oh,  I  shall  get  on  very  well,"  she  returned,  with  a 
pitiful  straightening  of  her  pretty  neck.  "  I  shall  try 
not  to  tax  anybody  too  much." 

Archie  dropped  her  hand,  and  turned  sharp  on  his 
heel. 

"Good-night,  Katherine,"  he  said, — and  as  he  bent 
to  kiss  her,  she  saw  that  his  lip  was  quivering.  But  he 


546  Katherine  Day 

lifted  his  head  with  the  old,  free  gesture  and,  in 
another  moment,  they  could  hear  his  step  ringing 
down  the  corridor. 

As  Katherine  turned  away  from  the  door,  she  heard 
a  small,  suppressed  sob.  Winny  had  dropped  into  a 
corner  of  the  unconsoling  gilt  sofa,  her  face  hidden 
against  the  satin  cushion.  Katherine  came  toward 
her,  still  a  little  shy  and  hesitating.  She  stood  an 
instant  at  the  head  of  the  couch,  and  then  she  stooped, 
and  lightly  kissed  the  pretty  fluff  of  golden  hair. 

"Dear  child,"  she  murmured, — "you  should  be 
kinder  to  yourself!" 

"How  can  I?"  Winny  sobbed,  "when  nobody  is 
kind  to  me? — Nobody  but  you,  and — I  don't  dare  let 
you  come  near  me  for  fear  you  '11  tell  me  all  about  his 
dying,  and — I  could  n't  bear  it!  I  could  n't  bear  it!" 

Then  Katherine  knelt  down  beside  her. 

"Come,  dear,"  she  begged,  drawing  the  sobbing 
figure  toward  her  with  a  gentle  compulsion,  the  less 
alarming  for  the  whimsical  turn  of  herspeech.  "Don't 
cry  against  that  hard  old  sofa !  I  'm  ever  so  much 
softer!"  And  as  the  charming  head  sank  upon  her 
breast:  "  You  may  trust  me,  Winny,"  she  whispered. 
"I  will  not  hurt  you.  I  will  not  tell  you  anything. 
You  shall  just — tell  me. " 

When,  after  a  little,  Winny  lifted  her  head,  her  face 
was  stained  with  tears, — not  those  mild,  aesthetic  drops 
that  she  used  to  have  always  at  command,  but  hot, 
salt  tears  that  are  not  becoming,  and  that  only 
embitter  grief.  Yet  the  eyes  she  turned  full  upon 
Katherine  were  already  dry,  though  red  and  swollen 
about  the  lids,  as  she  asked,  with  sudden  vehemence: 

"Katherine,  is  Tom  coming?" 

"I  am  sure  he  is,  if  you  want  him  to  come." 


The  Little  Black  Figure  547 

"  I  don't  see  what  that  has  to  do  with  it.  He  ought 
to  come,  anyway.  I  am  so  ashamed  of  his  not  com- 
ing!" 

"  Have  you  written  to  him  again, — more  than 
once?" 

"  No;  but  he  has  never  answered  my  first  letter." 

Katherine  rose  from  her  knees,  and,  drawing  up  a 
chair,  seated  herself  close  to  the  head  of  the  sofa  where 
Winny  could  take  her  hand  or  not,  as  she  liked.  The 
look  in  those  hard  blue  eyes — for  they  had  grown  very 
hard  and  bright — had  once  more  thrown  her  back 
into  unaccustomed  diffidence. 

"  Perhaps  it  was  not  an  easy  letter  to  answer,"  she 
ventured,  while  her  pitiful  gaze  rested  upon  the  tear- 
stained  face.  "Have  you  thought  of  that?" 

"Did  you  see  the  letter?"  Winny  asked,  indiffer- 
ently. 

"No;  I  did  not  see  it,  but — I  know  it  made  him 
cruelly  unhappy.  He  was  not — he  was  not  the  same 
after  he  got  it." 

"He  ought  to  have  been  unhappy!  I  'm  glad  he 
was  unhappy!"  Winny  cried,  with  a  certain  small 
fierceness.  "Why  should  I  be  the  only  one  to  suffer? " 

Katherine  leaned  toward  her  a  face  that  was  grave 
and  almost  stern,  yet  more  subtly  pitiful  than  ever. 

"You  told  me  just  now,"  she  said,  with  careful 
emphasis, — "that  you  were  afraid  of  me  lest  I  should 
tell  you  of  Arthur's  dying.  You  could  not  bear  even 
the  story  of  it.  But  Tom  bore  the  thing  itself.  Do 
you  think  he  did  not  suffer?" 

"  He  did  n't  suffer  as  I  did, — he  could  n't!  And — I 
was  n't  weak  about  it.  I  made  a  struggle !"  She  was 
speaking  rapidly  now,  and  the  color  in  her  cheek  was 
deepening.  "For  three  days  I  wouldn't  think, — I 


548  Katherine  Day 

would  n't  realize.  Nobody  knew  anything  about  it  but 
Melanie.  She  ordered  my  mourning  for  me.  She  did 
everything, — and  she  has  such  taste!  She  is  invalu- 
able !  The  people  came  and  tried  me  on  here,  and  not  a 
soul  beside  knew.  I  did  everything  just  the  same.  I 
said — if  I  don't  think  about  it,  it  's  just  as  if  it  had  n't 
happened.  I  could  n't  see  him  or  hear  him  before, — 
I  did  n't  know  for  how  long, — and  now  I  could  n't  see 
him  and  hear  him,  and  there  was  no  need  of  thinking 
for  how  long.  I  would  keep  about,  and  get  tired,  and 
then  I  could  sleep.  If  I  must  lose  Arthur,  that  was  no 
reason  why  I  should  lose  everything  else  too.  I  saw 
people,  and  I  did  all  the  things  I  promised  to  do,  and 
nobody  suspected  a  thing.  Why,  Katherine,  I  had  n't 
the  least  idea  that  I  had  such  a  strong  will !  It  seemed 
to  me  as  if  I  could  go  on  so  forever.  I  thought  per- 
haps I  should  never  wear  my  mourning  after  all." 

She  was  fingering  the  crape  on  her  cuffs,  while  she 
talked  rapidly,  without  pause. 

"  It  all  went  smoothly  for  three  days.  Melanie  said  I 
was  wonderful.  She  says  she  never  had  a  mistress  she 
respected  so  much! " — and  here  Winny  stopped  speak- 
ing, while  a  singular  expression  of  self-satisfaction 
spread  itself  over  the  superficially  sensitive  features. 

Katherine  listened,  as  she  would  have  listened  to  a 
doctor's  diagnosis  of  an  unprecedented  case.  It 
seemed  that  the  pathology  of  the  mind  had  its  unex- 
plored provinces,  as  well.  She  formed  no  opinion  of 
this  phenomenon, — she  merely  waited  for  light. 

"And  then?"  she  asked,  somewhat  coldly.  "After 
three  days?" 

The  eager  face  changed;  two  narrow,  vertical  lines 
appeared  between  the  eyes, — their  hard,  blue  light  was 
suddenly  blurred. 


The  Little  Black  Figure  549 

Winny  leaned  forward,  eager  still,  and  speaking 
more  rapidly  than  ever,  with  little  catchings  of  the 
breath  between  sentences. 

"The  third  evening,"  she  hurried  on,  "  I  went  to  the 
opera  with  some  French  people.  It  was  Lohengrin. 
I  had  never  seen  it  before.  I  did  n't  understand  it 
very  well,  and  it  seemed  long.  All  I  knew  was  that 
Elsa,  the  soprano,  had  lost  a  brother  in  some  myste- 
rious way.  I  had  n't  thought  of  him  as  a  child.  I 
had  n't  thought  of  him  much  anyway.  I  was  trying 
to  make  out  the  love  story.  And  suddenly — I  think 
it  must  have  been  toward  the  end,  it  was  so  late — the 
brother  came  to  life,  and — he  was  a  little  boy!  Kath- 
erine!  Do  you  understand?"  She  had  seized  Kath- 
erine's  hand,  and  was  clutching  it  tightly.  "He  was 
a  little  boy !  And  they  had  thought  he  was  dead !  And 
he  had  come  to  life !  And  all  the  chorus  shouted,  and 
Elsa  forgot  her  lover,  and  ran  forward,  and  knelt  be- 
side the  boy,  and — kissed  him!  And — then — Kath- 
erine !  —  they  said  I  fainted ! ' ' 

The  strong,  warm  hand  folded  itself  about  the 
clutching  fingers;  as  if  soothed,  composed  by  the 
touch,  Winny  let  her  head  fall  back  against  the  satin 
cushion,  her  eyes  still  turned  on  ^Catherine's  face. 

"You  don't  say  you  're  sorry,"  she  complained, — 
"but  I  suppose  you  are!" 

"No,  Winny,"  Katherine  answered,  very  quietly. 
"I  am  not  sorry.  I  'm  glad — glad  you  came  alive." 

"Came  alive!"  Winny  repeated,  drawing  her  hand 
away.  "It  was  not  coming  alive!  I  haven't  been 
half  alive  since  then!  It  has  been  just  dull  and  dreary! 
Nobody  comes  near  me  any  more.  They  just  leave 
condolence  cards.  They  seem  to  think  I  'm  as  good 
as  dead.  It  got  so  dreary, — it  got  to  be  such  a 


550  Katharine  Day 

nightmare!  There  was  no  one  but  Melanie.  She  's 
wonderful  about  toilets,  and  about  keeping  things  nice, 
but  she  's  no  real  companion.  I  don't  even  understand 
all  she  says. — I  wanted  somebody  that  really  cared — 
and  understood — " 

"You  didn't  think  of  your  mother?" 

"Mamma?  Oh,  no!"  she  answered,  impatient  of 
the  interruption.  "I  knew  beforehand  everything 
she  would  say.  And  so — I  sent  for  Archie.  He 
used  to  understand  me  so  well.  No  one  ever  suited 
me  as  Archie  did.  I  thought  when  he  came  it 
would  be  better.  But  it  was  not.  He  's  so  changed! 
I  don't  think  he  's  improved.  He  does  n't  seem  to 
care  any  more.  Katherine!" — with  a  sudden  strident 
emphasis — "  Katherine!  Have  I  changed  too?  Have  I 
grown  ugly  ? " — and  again  she  leaned  her  face  forward, 
eager,  anxious.  "Have  I  grown  ugly?"  she  asked. 

Katherine  met  the  pretty  face  half-way  and  kissed 
the  questioning  lips  for  answer,  and  Winny  never 
noticed  that  she  had  not  spoken. 

"When  I  asked  Archie  that,"  she  said,  with  a 
curious,  childish  fretfulness,  —  "for  it  seemed  as  if  I 
must  have  changed,  because  he  had  stopped  caring, — 
when  I  asked  him  if  I  had  grown  ugly,  he  was  n't 
sweet  with  me,  the  way  you  are.  He  just  said,  so 
roughly  that  I  felt  as  if  I  had  been  struck :  '  I  wish  to 
God  you  had,  Winny!'  Why,  Katherine,  it  made 
me  feel  like  the  ground  under  his  feet!" 

Katherine  listened,  speechless,  bewildered.  Was 
it  possible  that  Winny  did  not  understand?  Had 
she  played  with  Archie,  mercilessly?  Was  she  a 
cruel,  heartless  coquette?  Or  was  she  really  so  dulled 
by  the  egotism  of  her  pain  and  loneliness  that  she  was 
incapable  of  comprehending  anything  else? 


The  Little  Black  Figure  551 

"I  see,  you  feel  as  I  do,  that  it  was  inexcusable," 
Winny  was  saying.  And  as  Katherine  opened  her 
lips  in  protest:  "Oh,  of  course  you  would  stand  up 
for  Archie;  you  always  did.  But  you  wouldn't,  if 
you  understood  life  as  I  do.  I  know  perfectly  well 
why  he  is  so  restless  and  irritable,  and  selfish.  It  is 
because  he  is  dissipated!" 

"Winny!" 

"  Oh,  I  know!  I  've  seen  a  great  deal  of  life.  You 
were  always  so  unsophisticated,  Katherine!  That 
day  when  he  came  home  intoxicated,  it  was  I  who 
saw  it  first.  And  now,  I  know  by  so  many  little  signs 
that  he  is — " 

Katherine  seized  Winny 's  hand  to  check  her  words. 

"Hush,  Winny!"  she  commanded.  "You  shall 
not  speak  so  of  Archie!  It  is  cruel — it  is  false!  He 
is  only  too  noble,  too  high-minded !  Not  one  man  in 
five  thousand  would  have  been  to  you  what  he  has 
been!  He  has  sacrificed  everything  to  serve  you; 
he  has  sacrificed  everything  to  protect  you, — to  pro- 
tect you  from  yourself,  Winny!" 

"I  did  n't  want  him  to  sacrifice  anything!"  Winny 
stammered,  intimidated  more  by  the  grasp  of  the 
strong  hand  than  by  the  words  she  heard.  "  I  did  n't 
need  to  be  protected.  I  only  wanted  him  to  be  sorry, 
and  to  be  sweet  with  me,  the  way  he  used  to  be.  Oh, 
you  needn't  look  shocked,  Katherine!  I  didn't 
want  him  to  make  love  to  me.  That  's  something  I 
never  allow — when  I  can  help  it !  I  only  wanted  him 
to  be — like  he  was  before  we  were  engaged,  when  he 
was  just  always  considerate,  and  amusing,  and  seemed 
to  like  best  to  be  with  me.  I  wanted — just  a  little 
comfort!" — and  again  the  soft  lip  trembled — "I  was 
so  lonely  and  forlorn!  And  now  that  you  Ve  come, 


552  Katherine  Day 

he  's  going  away,  just  the  first  possible  minute.  He 
.won't  even  stay  on  to  see  you!" 

"If  I  were  you,  Winny,"  Katherine  answered, 
gravely,  "  I  would  n't  talk  any  more  about  Archie, — 
nor  think  any  more  about  him.  It  's  not  right.  It  's 
not  fitting." 

"As  if  I  cared  what  was  right, — what  was  fitting!" 
Winny  cried,  irritably.  "As  if  I  cared  for  such 
things,  when  I  'm  miserable!  Oh,  I  'm  so  miserable, 
Katherine!"  And  leaning  her  head  back,  she  stared, 
dry-eyed,  into  the  face  that  had  set  itself  in  lines  of 
unmistakable  censure. 

"Would  n't  it  be  better  to  go  to  bed?"  Katherine 
asked,  still  rather  coldly.  "You  are  tired  and  un- 
strung. You  ought  to  sleep." 

"But  I  shouldn't  sleep!  I  should  read  a  French 
novel  half  the  night, — a  horrid  novel, — and  then, 
when  it  was  finished,  I  should  find  life  just  as  dreadful 
as  ever.  I  should  remember,  like  a  shot,  that  Archie 
was  afraid  of  me, — that  Tom  despised  me, — that  you 
disapproved  of  me,  and  that — that  Arthur  was  dead ! " 

She  was  speaking  fast  again.  It  became  more  evi- 
dent every  moment  that  she  was  really  unbalanced 
and  unstrung.  She  was  like  the  uprooted  poplar 
which  Archie  had  imagined,  that  could  not  stand 
against  the  wind, — against  the  wind  of  adversity. 
And  Katherine  once  more  responded  to  the  old  ap- 
peal; and  little  by  little,  the  warm  human  sym- 
pathy, that  is  almost  as  much  an  attribute  of  the 
imagination  as  of  the  heart,  reasserted  itself;  and 
Winny  rested  upon  it,  all  the  more  gratefully  for  its 
momentary  withdrawal. 

They  talked  far  into  the  night,  and  gradually 
Winny  regained  her  composure, — a  composure  that 


The   Little  Black  Figure  553 

was  far  more  appealing  than  her  lamentations.  The 
outpouring  of  her  heart  to  Katherine,  stormy  and  in- 
coherent as  it  was,  had  tranquillized  and  steadied  her. 
She  was  beginning  to  lean  a  bit  against  the  stronger 
will,  the  stronger  intelligence,  the  stronger  affection, 
that  would  fain  make  of  itself  a  bulwark  for  her  sake. 

Katherine  stayed  with  her  until  long  after  mid- 
night, soothing,  guiding,  consoling.  Little  by  little 
Winny's  mind  began  to  hover  timidly  about  the 
thought  of  the  boy.  She  asked  questions  about  him, 
at  first  about  the  days  when  he  was  strong  and  well 
and  playing  in  the  snow.  She  liked  to  hear  how  fond 
Grandmother  Day  was  of  him.  She  seemed  to  think 
it  a  distinction  that  the  old  woman  whom  she  herself 
stood  so  much  in  awe  of  should  have  made  a  favorite 
of  her  child.  And  quite  late  in  the  night  she  began 
questioning  about  his  illness, — what  they  had  done 
for  him, — how  they  had  cared  for  him.  She  no 
longer  shrank  and  sobbed  at  the  thought,  but,  as 
Katherine  told  how  his  father  had  carried  the  child 
up  and  down  to  ease  the  pain,  and  then,  how  he  had 
long  held  him  in  his  arms  when  all  the  pain  had 
ceased, — slow  tears  brimmed  the  lovely  eyes,  and 
fell,  unheeded,  on  the  pretty  cheek,  still  so  touchingly 
round  and  childlike. 

"Tom  is  good!"  Winny  whispered,  at  last.  "Tom 
25  good!  I  wish  he  would  come." 

Then,  seeing  her  so  quiet  and  so  reasonable,  Kath- 
erine led  her  into  her  chamber  where  Melanie  was  sleep- 
ing in  her  chair,  and  together  they  helped  undress  the 
little  black  figure.  And  when  they  had  transformed  it 
into  a  white  figure,  and  had  seen  it  sink  among  the 
pillows,  tired  but  relaxed,  and  ready  for  rest,  Katherine 
stole  quietly  away  to  her  own  room  and  wrote  to  Tom. 


554  Katherine  Day 

She  wrote  rapidly,  and  the  letter  was  very  short. 

"I  found  Archie  here,"  she  wrote.  "Winny  had  sent  for 
him  in  her  sorrow,  which  is  very,  very  real,  though  she  is 
afraid  of  it,  and  hardly  owns  it.  He  has  done  what  he  could 
to  help  her  through  a  hard  time,  but  he  could  not  do  much, 
— neither  can  I.  It  is  you  she  wants,  it  is  you  she  needs,  Tom, 
and  I  told  her  I  was  sure  you  would  come." 

Katherine  sealed  the  letter  without  rereading  it, 
so  confident  was  she  that  she  had  written  the  one 
thing  needful.  And  then  she  went  to  her  window 
that  gave  on  the  open,  paved  court  of  the  hotel,  the 
silent  fountain,  and  the  whispering  palms.  All  was 
dark  and  deserted.  Not  a  light  gleamed  anywhere, 
not  a  footfall  sounded.  It  must  be  very  late. 

The  casement  was  wide  open.  She  leaned  far  for- 
ward over  the  iron  railing,  and  looked  up  into  the 
deep  sky.  There  among  the  twinkling  stars  was  one 
great  serene  planet.  She  did  not  know  its  name,  but 
she  recognized  it  as  a  companion  of  her  voyage.  She 
used  to  wonder  whether  it  was  shining  at  home. 
Well, — it  was  shining  here, — so  far — so  far  from 
home !  What  was  it  that  brought  back  to  her  mind 
the  very  inflection  of  her  grandmother's  voice,  a  life- 
time ago,  as  she  stood,  so  tall  above  the  two  little 
children  on  the  woodbine-hung  veranda,  and  said: 
"They  always  shine  with  a  steady  light." 

"O  Archie!"  she  murmured,  sadly, — "O  Archie! 
If  I  had  only  been  half  as  true  and  steady  as  you — 
one  half  as  true  and  steady!" 


CHAPTER    XV 

TOM'S    LETTER 

"Why  comes  temptation  but  for  man  to  meet 
And  master  and  make  crouch  beneath  his  foot?" 

PROBABLY  no  one  would  have  been  more  amazed 
than  Archie,  if  he  had  known  that  Katherine 
had  been  drawing  comparisons  between  them,  favor- 
able to  himself.  For  no  one  knew  as  Archie  did,  by 
what  devious  and  doubtful  paths  he  had  lured  his  feet 
away  from  the  one  pitfall  his  soul  dreaded. 

His  code  of  morals  was  as  easy  now  as  it  had  always 
been.  He  had  never  taken  life  seriously  enough  to 
embarrass  himself  with  hard-and-fast  rules  of  con- 
duct. If  his  deflections  from  the  prescribed  course 
had  hitherto  betrayed  him  into  no  very  deep  or  de- 
filing mire  of  iniquity,  it  was  less  because  of  any 
strenuousness  of  the  moral  sense  than  because  his 
instincts  were  essentially  refined,  essentially  those  of 
a  gentleman. 

There  had  been  times  when,  as  Paul  suspected,  he 
had  lived  pretty  hard;  but  these  periods  were  never 
of  long  duration.  They  were  usually  a  form  of  eva- 
sion. Yet  even  when  he  found  himself  in  mental  or 
emotional  straits,  he  was  quite  as  likely  to  seek  a 
harmless  issue  as  a  harmful  one.  He  oftener  took 
to  the  woods  than  to  the  wine-cup,  and  his  seasons 


556  Katherine  Day  , 

of  conviviality,  when  they  did  occur,  were  usually 
passed  in  decent  society.  If  his  tastes  had  been  low, 
his  life  would  scarcely  have  risen  above  their  level. 
As  it  was,  while  not  entirely  guiltless  of  deviations  from 
the  straight  and  narrow  path,  he  did  not  find  such  va- 
garies sufficiently  to  his  taste  for  frequent  indulgence. 

In  Paris,  however,  from  the  moment  of  his  arrival 
there  in  the  new  role  of  comforter  in  ordinary  to  poor 
Winny,  he  found  himself  confronted  with  an  entirely 
new  situation.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  was 
forced  to  do  persistent  violence  to  his  own  sensibilities, 
because,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  he  was  unable  to 
run  away.  It  was  a  predicament  he  would  not  volun- 
tarily have  faced, — one  which  he  had,  in  fact,  hitherto 
consistently  avoided.  If,  during  the  three  years  of 
Winny 's  sojourn  in  Europe,  he  had  made  no  effort  to 
meet  her,  it  was  because  he  had  not  had  the  least  desire 
to  do  so.  He  had  never  in  his  life  submitted  to  un- 
necessary pain;  and,  when  her  summons  came,  he 
heartily  wished  himself  in  another  hemisphere. 

Those  two  weeks  had  been,  as  he  graphically  ex- 
pressed it,  "a  good  deal  of  a  chore."  He  had  found 
himself  as  susceptible  as  ever  to  the  personal  charm  of 
his  old  love,  and,  if  he  was  somewhat  less  blind  than  he 
had  formerly  been  to  her  imperfections  of  character, 
they  scarcely  made  him  like  her  less.  It  was  not  an 
ideal  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  at  the  most  impression- 
able period  of  his  life, — it  was  a  flesh-and-blood  girl, 
with  a  face,  a  voice,  a  manner,  that  his  nature  re- 
sponded to,  because  it  was  set  to  just  that  key  and  no 
other.  Moreover,  if  the  Winny  he  found  in  Paris  was 
somewhat  jangled  and  out  of  tune,  he  was  well  aware 
that  his  hand  had  the  power  to  restore  the  broken 
harmony,  to  wake  again  the  slumbering  sweetness  of 


Tom's  Letter  557 

her  spirit,  so  long  denied.  And  because  he  did  not  dare 
follow  the  dictates  of  his  own  heart, — because  he 
trusted  her  even  less  than  he  trusted  himself, — he 
became  as  restless,  as  unsatisfactory,  as — dissipated — 
as  she  charged  him  with  being.  Just  in  so  far  as  he 
felt  himself  compelled  to  be  chary  of  his  hours  with 
her,  was  he  lavish  of  outside  distractions.  There  were 
men  of  his  acquaintance  in  Paris  who  knew  its  glit- 
tering resources  by  heart,  and  nothing  loth  were  they 
to  do  the  honors  of  the  city  in  his  behalf.  He  had 
found  distraction,  but  he  had  not  liked  it;  he  had 
eluded  Winny,  but  he  felt  that  he  had  done  so  clum- 
sily, and  he  was  glad  to  be  gone. 

"How  enchanting  Paris  is!"  Katherine  cried,  as 
they  drove  to  the  station  through  the  fresh  spring 
morning.  It  was  Sunday,  and  all  the  world  was  out 
in  holiday  attire,  gay  and  sparkling  as  only  a  Paris 
populace  can  be. 

"Matter  of  taste,"  Archie  rejoined.  "I  hate  it, 
myself." 

"Do  you?" — and  Katherine  gave  him  a  quick, 
inquiring  glance.  His  face,  exposed  to  the  uncom- 
promising out-of-door  light,  did  not  look  right.  She 
felt  sure  he  had  not  slept.  Well, — neither  had  she. 
It  was  Winny  who  had  slept,  and  slept  so  late  that  she 
had  missed  Archie's  good-bye  call.  Had  Archie  felt  it, 
the  discourtesy,  the  ingratitude  of  it?  Katherine 
longed  to  make  good  Winny's  lapse  of  manners, — to 
tell  him  how  dear  and  fine  he  had  been.  It  would  be 
news  to  him  too,  for  he  might  be  trusted  never  to  sus- 
pect it  himself. 

"I  don't  wonder  you  dislike  Paris,  this  time,"  she 
remarked,  easily.  "  I  don't  wonder  you  have  found 
it  a  chore!  Poor  Winny  is  not  herself  just  now." 


558  Katharine  Day 

"Oh,  yes,  she  is; — that  's  just  exactly  what  she  is!" 
he  declared.  "And  of  course  she  has  been  pretty 
trying, — but  not  in  the  way  you  think.  I  don't  in  the 
least  mind  her  little  digs.  They  're  all  on  top.  It  's 
what  does  n't  come  to  the  surface  that  one  gets  afraid 
of.  Why,  Katherine,  I  've  been  so  rattled  sometimes 
that  I  've  — well — never  mind.  I  hate  Paris !  It  's — 
a  rocky  place  when  you  Ve  lost  your  bearings!" 

"  I  should  say  if  anyone  had  ever  kept  his  bearings 
it  was  you,  Archie,"  she  exclaimed,  warmly.  "  Winny 
ought  to  be  eternally  grateful  to  you." 

"No,"  he  protested,  with  evident  dejection.  "I 
have  n't  done  it  well.  I  had  n't  the  nerve.  It  has 
been  a  wretched  fiasco." 

"A  fiasco  that  most  of  us  would  be  proud  of,"  she 
persisted. 

"  Oh,  no!  There  's  nothing  to  be  proud  of;  it  had  to 
be — Paris  against  Winny!  I  tell  you,  Katherine,"  he 
went  on,  excitedly — he  was  clearly  a  trifle  off  his 
balance  this  morning — "  I  tell  you,  if  I  had  sat  holding 
hands  all  day  the  way  she  would  have  liked — it  might 
have  been  a  comfort  to  her  too,  poor  little  thing! — 
but,  if  I  had  done  that,  it  would  have  ended  in  my 
picking  her  up  and  carrying  her  off  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth!" 

"Yes,  dear;    but  you  didn't." 

She  would  not  take  it  too  seriously,  lest  he  should 
repent  his  frankness ;  but  she  knew  all  that  he  meant. 
Indeed,  she  could  best  measure  the  compulsion  his 
elastic  nature  had  undergone,  by  the  force  of  the 
rebound.  He,  who  so  rarely  talked  of  himself,  even  to 
her,  seemed  eager  for  confession.  Did  he  think  that 
sins  that  he  could  even  hint  of  to  Katherine  must  after 
all  be  venial? 


Tom's  Letter  559 

"No,  I  didn't!  But  I  paid  high  for  exemption. 
And — I  tell  you  what,  these  Paris  streets  don't  look  so 
pretty  to  me  as  they  do  to  you!" — and  his  chin 
dropped,  while  he  glanced  mistrustfully,  from  under 
scowling  brows,  at  the  holiday  throng. 

Was  Winny  right?  Was  Archie  really  changed? 
Was  he — not  improved?  Was  he — dissipated?  Had 
he  been  squandering  himself  as  a  brutal  horsebreaker 
will  overdrive  a  spirited  colt  which  he  cannot  other- 
wise subdue?  Alas,  he  looked  it!  She  heard  it,  too,  in 
the  tension  of  his  voice, — she  had  felt  it  already  in  the 
laxness  of  his  grasp. 

"Never  mind,  dear,"  she  said,  gently,  and  without 
undue  or  alarming  emphasis.  "When  we  have  our 
little  trip  next  month,  you  and  I,  there  won't  be  any 
more  nightmares — for  either  of  us." 

"Nightmares?  Nightmares  for  either  of  us?  Why, 
Katherine!  Do  you  have  them  too?" 

"Sometimes,"  she  said, — and  there  was  a  subtle 
inflection  in  her  voice  that  touched  him  instantly. 
"  Everybody  does,  I  suppose.  But — I  am  counting 
upon  you  to  drive  them  away  for  me.  Oh.^Archie!" 
she  cried,  letting  the  eloquence  of  sincerity  have  its 
way,  "Oh,  Archie!  it  will  be  such  a  comfort  to  have 
someone  to  depend  upon — after  all  these  years!" 

He  had  turned  suddenly  grave,  with  a  self-possessed, 
responsible  gravity. 

"I  'm  not  accustomed  to  playing  prop,"  he  said, 
quietly;  "but  I  believe  I  might  take  a  brace,  even  at 
this  late  day,  for  your  sake,  Katherine!" 

And  Katherine  knew  that  for  once  she  had  not  erred 
in  following  the  promptings  of  her  heart. 

The  echo  of  Archie's  talk,  the  echo  of  his  mood, 
abode  with  her  on  her  return  drive,  and  it  was  only  in 


560  Katherine  Day 

the  still  deeper  recesses  of  consciousness  that  her  mind 
recurred  to  that  other  poor  fellow  across  the  seas  to 
whom  she  had  just  mailed  her  unconditional  sum- 
mons. 

Indeed  there  was  something  so  invigorating  in  the 
mere  thought  of  Tom,  his  strength  and  his  rectitude, 
that  she  had  found  it  a  source  rather  of  courage  than 
of  solicitude  throughout  this  crisis.  She  believed  him 
equal  to  any  heroism,  provided  it  were  of  the  kind  that 
called  for  action.  His  bereavement,  the  necessarily 
passive  suffering  of  that,  had  shaken  her  profoundly ; 
but  she  was  far  from  a  true  understanding  of  the 
sacrifice  she  was  now  demanding  of  him.  It  was 
his  duty  to  come  to  Winny;  it  was  his  duty  to  com- 
fort and  protect  her.  This  she  knew,  with  a  posi- 
tive knowledge  that  left  no  margin  for  doubt.  If, 
then,  the  simple  question  of  right  and  wrong  was 
established  to  her  own  satisfaction, — now,  when  she 
was  in  a  better  position  than  he  to  judge, — she  had  only 
to  communicate  the  truth  to  him.  To  that  end  had 
she  forced  this  great  solution;  to  that  end  had  he 
encouraged  her  action.  And  what  remained  for  him, 
once  in  possession  of  the  truth,  but  to  be  guided 
by  it?  He  would  suffer?  Ah,  yes!  They  must  both 
suffer,  now  and  always.  Such  was  their  destiny.  But 
no  suffering,  not  even  this — not  even  this! — should 
betray  them  into  forfeit  of  their  faith  in  one  another. 

Yet,  if  Katherine,  with  all  her  insight,  all  her  sym- 
pathy, quickened  by  a  surpassing  love  and  tenderness, 
failed  to  measure  the  severity  of  the  blow  she  was 
dealing  through  that  terrible  little  letter,  it  was  not 
that  she  overestimated  Tom's  strength  of  character, 
but  rather  that  she  totally  misconceived  the  at- 
titude of  mind  in  which  he  was  awaiting  it.  As  a 


Tom's  Letter  561 

matter  of  fact,  so  convinced  was  he  of  the  utter 
callousness  of  Winny's  nature,  so  certain  of  the  dis- 
illusionment which  Katherine  must  meet  with,  that 
he  was  looking  forward,  almost  without  misgiving,  to 
the  outcome  of  the  experiment.  He  did  not  of  course 
anticipate  an  immediate  surrender  of  judgment  on  her 
part;  he  did  not  expect  her  to  perceive  at  once,  even 
when  in  possession  of  the  facts,  the  justice  of  his  own 
deductions.  But  he  was  far  from  apprehending  any 
such  ultimatum  as  was  on  its  way  to  him. 

When  Katherine  was  gone,  when  the  last  sight  of 
her,  standing,  serene  and  confident,  on  the  deck  of  the 
steamer,  had  vanished  in  the  distance,  he  had  merely 
possessed  his  soul  in  patience. 

"I  do  hope  the  trip  will  be  a  great  success,"  Uncle 
Theodore  had  remarked,  as  the  two  men  walked  down 
the  long,  draughty  freight  house,  and  out  into  the 
noisy  street. 

"  I  hope  it  may,"  Tom  had  rejoined,  fervently.  "  I 
hope  it  may  be  a  success  in  every  particular." 

The  weeks  that  followed  were  busy  ones,  for  he  put 
in  an  amount  of  work  that  would  have  made  a  day- 
laborer  stare.  But  when  he  was  alone  with  his  pipe 
and  his  books  he  made  no  special  effort  to  distract  his 
mind.  He  read  a  good  deal,  but  also  he  indulged  in 
prolonged  ponderings.  He  thought  much  and  ten- 
derly of  Arthur,  and  with  a  manly  acceptance  of  the 
pain  of  it  all  that  was  far  as  possible  removed  from 
that  distrust  of  emotional  disturbance  which  he  had 
entertained  in  the  old  days,  when  the  thought  of 
Katherine  assailed  him.  He  allowed  his  mind  to  lin- 
ger with  unspeakable  love  and  sadness  on  all  those 
slight  incidents,  those  trifling  looks  and  acts  of  the 
child,  that  acquire  such  pathos  when  they  have  ceased 


562  Katharine  Day 

to  be.  Nor  did  he  shrink  from  the  memory  of  those 
last  days  and  nights  of  agonized  hope,  of  intolerable 
despair.  When  he  had  closed  his  book  he  would  sit 
until  deep  into  the  night,  brooding  upon  the  pictures 
that  were  graven  in  his  heart  forever,  pictures  of  the 
suffering  child,  and  of  the  tender,  unwearying  devo- 
tion that  had  sustained  the  pitiful  weakness,  and 
soothed  the  cruel  pain.  And  always  his  thought  of 
Katherine  was  as  the  thought  of  his  own. 

He  did  not  dwell  upon  that  hour  of  strenuous  con- 
flict,— he  hardly  stayed  his  mind  upon  the  great  ad- 
mission of  their  previous  meeting.  His  love  for  her 
so  possessed  him,  his  knowledge  of  her  love  for  him  so 
filled  the  whole  horizon  of  his  thoughts,  that  he  hardly 
remembered  that  there  had  ever  been  any  question, 
any  doubt. 

Yet,  absorbing  as  was  his  sense  of  possession, — of 
that  possession  which  makes  existence  a  great  and 
harmonious  thing, — his  visions  of  the  future  were 
singularly  indefinite.  A  certain  austere  loyalty  to  his 
pledge  to  Katherine  restrained  him  from  undue  as- 
sumption. He,  the  always  practical,  the  always 
efficient,  moulder  of  his  own  fortunes,  found  himself 
refraining  from  taking  the  initiative,  here,  where 
everything  was  at  stake.  He  had  given  his  word  to 
Katherine;  he  had  sworn  to  be  her  faithful  squire. 
He  would  not,  even  in  his  innermost  thoughts,  assume 
a  control  of  their  common  destinies  which  he  had 
conceded  once  for  all  to  her.  Bye  and  bye,  when  he 
had  attained  his  freedom,  and  when  Winny  was  in  the 
full  and  manifest  enjoyment  of  hers, — then — well — 
that  would  be  one  step  accomplished.  That  step  was 
his  to  take.  And  after?  As  Katherine  had  asked — • 
after?  He  might  have  to  wait  for  years.  There  were 


Tom's  Letter  563 

depths  in  Katharine's  nature  that  he  knew  he  had  not 
sounded ;  there  might  be  undreamed-of  reluctances  on 
the  one  hand,  and  wrestlings  on  the  other,  that  he 
dared  not  think  upon.  But  some  day, — some  day — 
those  eyes  would  speak  again; — some  day  he  should 
come  to  his  own. 

Tom  was  a  patient  man,  and  the  time  did  not  seem 
long  while  he  waited  for  Katherine's  letter.  In  fact, 
it  was  there  before  he  had  really  begun  to  look  for  it. 
He  found  it  in  his  letter-box  when  he  arrived  at  his 
lodgings  after  dinner  one  April  evening.  He  took  it 
out,  and  scrutinized  it,  carefully,  noting  the  clear,  flow- 
ing hand  he  had  always  approved,  and  thinking  how  he 
should  never  again  hate  the  Paris  postmark.  She 
must  have  written  at  once.  Would  she  be  surprised, 
he  wondered,  as  he  passed  up  his  four  flights  of  stairs, 
that  he  had  not  written  meanwhile?  No;  he  knew 
better  than  that;  she  would  not  have  wished  it. 

So,  she  had  seen  Winny,  he  thought,  as  he  filled 
and  lit  his  pipe  and  pulled  up  a  chair  to  the  drop- 
light.  He  was  not  eager  for  his  pipe,  but  this  letter 
from  Katherine  was  no  light  matter,  to  be  seized  upon 
precipitately.  It  must  be  read  slowly  and  carefully. 
The  things  she  would  say  would  not  be  in  themselves 
weighty;  it  was  what  she  left  unsaid  that  would  call 
for  consideration.  He  must  read  between  the  lines. 

He  broke  the  seal  and  drew  the  letter  from  the 
envelope,  remembering  that  hers  had  been  the  last 
hand  to  touch  that  small  white  sheet  of  paper. 

It  was  a  short  letter, — only  one  page.  Of  course! 
There  would  be  but  little  to  say  at  first. 

Apd  now  he  began  to  read. 

Why  did  the  first  words  give  him  pause?  Supposing 
Archie  was  there?  What  was  that  to  him?  But 


564  Katherine   Day 

— "Winnyhad  sent  for  him  in  her  sorrow."  So — 
Winny  had  made  Katherine  believe  in  her  sorrow. 
She  had  seduced  her  better  judgment  from  the  out- 
set !  The  old  boyish  spirit  of  altercation  with  Kath- 
erine seized  him.  He  had  thought  she  had  more  sense 
than  that! 

"But  he  could  not  do  much, — neither  can  I."  Of 
course  not!  How  could  there  be  any  point  of  con- 
tact between  the  mind  of  Katherine  and  the  mind  of 
Winny, — between  the  real  and  the  sham, — between 
the  noble  and  the  ignoble? 

And  then,  suddenly,  the  running  commentary 
ceased,  as  the  pulsebeat  ceases  when  the  heart  stops. 

"  It  is  you  she  wants,  it  is  you  she  needs,  Tom,  and 
I  told  her  I  was  sure  you  would  come." 

Tom  took  his  pipe  from  his  mouth  and  laid  it  on  the 
table,  very  carefully,  with  the  bowl  over  the  edge 
that  it  should  not  burn  the  cloth.  And  then  he  read  the 
letter  again.  Not  because  he  had  not  fully  under- 
stood it.  He  was  neither  dazed  nor  bewildered ;  he 
was  hardly  surprised.  It  was  almost  as  if  he  had 
anticipated  its  tenor.  There  was  something  about  it 
as  inevitable  as  death,  as  useless  to  contend  against. 
"I  told  her  I  was  sure  you  woul'd  come." 

Tom  felt  as  if  he  were  caught  in  some  horrible 
machine  that  knew  no  more  of  any  resistance  on  his 
part  than  the  lacerating  steel  knows  of  the  resistance 
of  the  nerves, — all  his  force  of  will,  all  his  fighting 
energies,  set  at  naught. 

For  hours  he  sat  with  the  letter  in  his  hand,  while 
a  deliberate  clock  in  the  corner,  a  clock  that  had  told 
the  hour  of  his  birth,  calmly  ticked  away  the  minutes 
of  his  anguish.  He  should  not  submit.  Well? 
Neither  does  the  nerve  submit  when  severed  by  the 


Tom's  Letter  565 

steel.  He  should  not  go  to  Winny.  But  what  mat- 
tered that?  What  was  Winny,  more  than  the  handle 
to  the  hand,  by  means  of  which  the  steel  is  wielded? 

The  room  was  perfectly  still  excepting  for  the  tick- 
ing and  the  striking  of  the  clock  which  seemed  to  be 
of  the  opinion  that  the  hours  were  passing.  Tom 
began  wondering,  dully,  whether  he  need  ever  move 
again.  He  believed  you  could  bear  things  better  if 
you  kept  perfectly  still.  And,  then,  suddenly,  with- 
out any  apparent  inducing  cause,  his  pipe  reversed 
itself  and  emptied  the  dead  ashes  over  his  boot. 

Tom  rose,  and  carefully  brushed  the  ashes  off; 
and  then,  as  the  surface  of  the  leather  remained 
clouded,  he  got  out  his  blacking  brush  and  polished 
off  the  spot.  After  that  he  went  for  a  walk. 

It  was  a  beautiful  night,  mild  and  balmy,  with  a 
sky  full  of  stars.  As  he  closed  the  house  door  behind 
him  and  passed  down  the  steps  he  remembered  that  he 
had  left  his  latch-key  on  the  table.  All  the  better — so 
much  less  to  carry !  That  letter  in  his  breast  pocket 
was  load  enough  for  anybody.  Besides,  it  would  be 
time  enough  to  come  back  when  the  house  was  astir. 

Without  any  special  premeditation,  he  bent  his 
steps  out  of  the  city  toward  the  road  that  led  to  Cam- 
wood; and  when  that  familiar  highway  was  fairly 
entered  upon,  he  found  that  he  was  beginning  to 
think  consecutively.  And  why  not?  He  had  been 
rather  dodging  thought,  but  after  all,  he  knew  much 
better  how  to  deal  with  thoughts  than  with  feelings. 

Yet  he  got  little  comfort  from  his  meditations. 
They  were  all  of  Katherine, — not  of  the  Katherine 
that  loved  him, — only  of  the  Katherine  that  he  loved, 
and  who  now,  for  all  time,  was  lost  to  him.  He  was 
not  going  back  to  Winny,  but  neither  was  Katherine 


566  Katherine  Day 

coming  back  to  him.  He  knew  her  well, — the  ten- 
derness of  her  nature  and  its  generosity, — the  breadth 
and  the  insight  of  her  sympathy.  But  he  knew,  too, 
that  essential  substratum  of  New  England  granite 
which  its  appreciators  call  conscience;  and  he  knew 
that  when  her  will  was  planted  upon  that  she  could 
be  inexorable. 

He  should  not  go  back  to  Winny,  but  Katherine 
would  never  come  back  to  him.  She  had  not  written 
that  letter  carelessly.  It  was  a  simple,  dispassionate 
little  letter  to  the  eye, — even  to  the  eye  of  the  mind; 
yet  he  knew  it  had  been  written  with  her  heart's 
blood.  The  torturing  passion  of  her  tenderness  for 
him,  as  it  had  revealed  itself  in  her  dumb  admission, 
and,  more  clearly  still  in  her  spoken  protest,  had  been 
better  understood  by  him  than  by  herself.  It  was 
not  impatience  at  his  own  suffering  that  had  prompted 
him  to  seek  release  from  the  chains  he  had  himself 
forged; — it  was  the  perception  of  her  unmerited  par- 
ticipation in  his  punishment.  As  he  had  said  to  her, 
in  sober  truth:  "I  deserved  it,  and  I  accepted  it. 
But,  you!  There  is  no  justice  in  it  for  you!  I — 
even  I — shall  find  salvation  yet  through  your  deserv- 
ingness!"  And  now  she  had  rejected,  once  and  for 
all,  that  salvation,  so  rational,  so  just,  which  he  was 
prepared  to  achieve. 

He  had  arrived  in  front  of  Grandmother  Day's 
house,  and  his  foot  paused  from  mere  force  of  habit. 
But  it  would  not  do  to  enter  at  the  gate.  The  night 
was  so  still  that  his  steps,  coming  up  the  gravel  walk, 
would  rouse  the  house;  and  he  would  not  skulk 
along  the  grassy  borders.  He  passed  on,  and  down 
the  side  street,  whence  he  could  look  over  the  top 
of  the  high  board  fence  into  the  garden. 


Tom's  Letter  567 

He  could  see,  in  the  starlight,  the  old  grape-arbor 
where  he  had  found  Katherine  with  Archie  on  that 
Sunday  noon  when  he  had  so  resented  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  pigtails,  and  all  the  other  changes  which 
young  ladyhood  involved.  There  was  the  old  quince- 
tree  where  she  had  paused,  fresh  and  cool,  after  win- 
ning her  impromptu  race  with  him.  What  a  flash  of 
white  teeth  and  laughing  eyes  she  had  turned  upon 
him  as  he  came  up,  two  seconds  behind  her!  Ah, 
those  fatal  two  seconds  by  which  the  race  is  lost! 
It  was  typical  of  his  whole  life! 

He  thought  of  that  little  scene,  and  of  a  score  of 
other  trifling  incidents  that  were  no  less  distinct  in 
his  memory.  Each  one  came  to  him  like  a  waft  of 
perfume  from  a  lost  Eden. 

As  he  stood  looking  over  that  prosaic  board  fence, 
he  suddenly  remembered  an  execrable  old  daub  of 
the  cinque  cento  that  he  had  seen  in  a  foreign  picture- 
gallery,  the  which  portrayed  our  first  parents,  gazing 
dejectedly  over  the  hedge  into  Paradise.  He  knew 
exactly  how  they  felt, — those  poor  things  whose 
creator  had  painted  them  all  askew.  To  be  sure,  he 
reflected,  there  were  two  of  them.  That  did  not 
tally.  And  yet?  if  Katherine  were  to  have  her  way, 
it  would.  For  a  sudden  conviction  had  seized  him, 
then  and  there,  that  Eve's  other  name  was  Winny! 

Almost  cheered  by  that  little  spurt  of  malice,  Tom 
turned,  and  continued  his  walk.  It  took  him  quite 
out  of  the  suburban  district  into  the  open  country, 
and  little  by  little  the  monotonous  tramp,  tramp  of 
his  feet  on  the  highroad  began  to  exercise  a  soothing 
effect  upon  his  rasped  sensibilities.  The  steady  phys- 
ical exertion  was  gratefully  stupefying  to  his  over- 
wrought mind. 


568  Katharine  Day 

"  I  don't  know  when  I  've  enjoyed  a  walk  so  much," 
he  caught  himself  thinking, — and  that  brought  him 
up  short,  face  to  face  with  reality. 

He  looked  about  him  and,  finding  by  certain  land- 
marks which  he  had  come  to  know  in  his  rides  with 
Katherine,  that  he  had  walked  a  long  distance,  he 
turned  his  steps  toward  a  deserted  railway  station, 
and  sat  down  on  a  bench  outside,  to  wait  for  an  in- 
ward-bound train.  The  station-master,  arriving  at 
six  o'clock  to  open  the  doors,  found  him  there,  asleep; 
when,  however,  the  wayfarer  roused  himself  and 
demanded  a  ticket  it  became  evident  that  he  was  no 
tramp. 

The  one  thing  that  Tom  was  afraid  of  in  the  days 
that  followed  was  that  he  might  yield, — that  his  better 
judgment  might  be  overruled.  He  did  not  know 
just  why  he  feared  it,  for  he  clearly  perceived  that 
what  he  did  or  left  undone  could  have  no  effect  upon 
the  actual  situation.  Neither  resistance  nor  acqui- 
escence would  substantially  modify  his  status  with 
Katherine.  She  would  be  gratified  if  he  yielded, 
but,  if  he  refused  to  yield,  she  would  not  therefore 
censure  him.  She  would  be  the  first  to  recognize  his 
title  to  decide  such  a  matter  for  himself.  If  he  de- 
clined to  be  guided  by  her,  she  would  respect  him 
none  the  less.  She  would  admit  that  he  had  as  good 
a  right  as  she  to  be  governed  by  his  own  conscience 
rather  than  by  that  of  another.  As  good  a  right  as 
she  ?  Yes ;  but  no  better.  If  he  could  count  upon  toler- 
ance from  her,  it  was  but  a  measure  of  the  tolerance 
she  would  exact  of  him.  He  had  his  own  problems 
to  deal  with,  as  she  had  hers.  She  would  never  brook 
an  interference  that  she  would  not  offer. 

Tom  passed  no  more  vagrant  nights,  nor  did  his 


Tom's  Letter  569 

daily  routine  differ  materially  from  its  usual  course. 
He  did  not  mean  that  it  ever  should.  He  did  not 
propose  to  undermine  his  health  and  reason  with  vain 
speculations  and  futile  rebellions.  His  course  was 
clear,  and  he  was  good  at  steering.  There  were 
storms  ahead?  Very  well!  He  was  conscious  of 
sound  timbers  and  a  stout  rudder. 

Katherine's  letter  had  come  on  a  Monday  evening, 
— that  evening  that  seemed  always  like  an  anniver- 
sary, because  it  was  on  a  Monday  evening  that  little 
Arthur  fell  ill.  On  Saturday  morning  Tom  awoke 
with  the  early  light,  and  he  remembered  the  day  of 
the  week.  He  had  had  a  long  and  dreamless  sleep, 
and  he  awoke  refreshed.  He  felt  that  his  brain  was 
unusually  clear,  and  the  first  thought  that  came  to 
him  associated  itself  with  Arthur. 

"Four  days  and  five  nights,"  he  said  to  himself. 
"Just  as  long  as  it  took  Arthur  to  die!  " 

He  wondered  why  he  had  said  that; — he  wondered 
what  had  been  going  on  in  his  mind  while  he  slept 
that  dreamless  sleep.  And  then  he  perceived  that 
he  was  about  to  write  to  Katherine. 

He  got  up  and  made  a  scrupulously  careful  toilet. 
If  he  was  to  write  to  Katherine, — at  last, — it  must  be 
done  decorously  and  in  order.  He  had  not  thought 
of  what  he  was  going  to  say;  he  only  knew  that  he 
was  about  to  write. 

He  passed  into  the  front  room  and  drew  up  the 
shades ;  and  then  he  flung  open  the  window.  It  was 
a  heavenly  spring  morning,  soft  and  spicy  even  here 
in  the  narrow  city  street.  There  was  an  ivy  growing 
on  the  wall  of  the  house.  As  he  leaned  forward  to 
breathe  the  good  air  he  chanced  to  look  down,  and 
he  saw  that  the  tendrils  of  the  vine  had  almost  reached 


57O  Katharine  Day 

the  sill  of  his  window.  The  vigorous  growth  had 
worked  its  way  up  three  stories  since  first  he  came 
there  to  live,  that  year  when  Katherine  was  abroad, 
— when  Archie  was  getting  engaged  to  Winny. 

He  reached  down  and  picked  a  pale  new  leaf  and 
stuck  it  in  his  buttonhole;  after  which  he  went  to 
his  desk  and  pulled  out  a  sheet  of  paper.  He  re- 
garded it  with  a  good  deal  of  interest  for  a  few  min- 
utes, and  presently,  with  a  sort  of  tense  composure, 
he  began  writing. 

"  KATHERINE  "  : 

"  Seven  years  ago  I  refused  you  the  one  grace  you  had  ever 
asked  of  me,  and  the  just  gods  pushed  me  down  into  hell. 
You  shall  not  be  denied  again.  But  the  gods  are  no  longer 
just.  It  is  not  to  them  I  yield,  but  to  you. 

"TOM." 

He  read  the  letter  through  several  times,  but  he 
could  find  nothing  to  alter.  And  when  he  had  sealed 
and  stamped  it  he  carried  it  to  the  main  post-office 
and  dropped  it  into  the  box. 

After  he  had  had  his  breakfast,  he  walked  to  the 
office  of  the  Transatlantic  Cable  Company,  and  dis- 
patched a  message  to  Winny.  He  wondered  why  all 
this  should  be  so  easy.  Yet  he  knew  perfectly  well 
why  it  was  easy.  It  was  simply  that  the  time  was 
ripe.  And  an  hour  later,  as  he  issued  from  the  office 
of  the  Steamship  Company,  where  he  had  engaged 
his  passage,  he  said  again,  as  he  had  said  on  first 
awaking: 

"  Four  days  and  five  nights, — just  as  long  as  it  took 
Arthur  to  die!" 


CHAPTER    XVI 

MONT    ST.    MICHEL 

"Oh,  which  were  best,  to  roam  or  rest? 
The  land's  lap  or  the  water's  breast?" 

'  A  LL  loss,  all  pain,  is  particular;  the  universe 
f\  remains  to  the  heart  unhurt." 

These  words  of  Emerson's  were  not  inscribed  in 
the  Guide  St.  Michel  which  Katherine  held  absently 
in  her  hand,  but  the  luminous  spirit  of  them  seemed 
brooding  visibly  on  the  face  of  the  vast  Greve  as  she 
gazed  dreamily  down  upon  it  from  a  vine-embowered 
terrace  far  up  on  the  precipitous  side  of  the  Rock. 

It  was  high  noon  of  their  first  day  at  Mont  St. 
Michel,  where  they  had  arrived,  Katherine  and 
Archie,  the  previous  evening,  just  in  time  to  hurry 
to  the  ramparts  and  watch  the  tide  come  in.  Now 
it  was  dead  low  water,  and  it  appeared  that  the  land- 
ward view  across  the  wide  sweep  of  sand  was  as  fair 
and  as  enchaining  as  the  more  famous  sight  for  which 
so  many  thousands  make  the  pilgrimage  to  this  ocean 
shrine. 

The  travellers  had  been  up  soon  after  sunrise  in 
order  to  row  around  the  Mount  while  the  tide  served ; 
and  then,  after  breakfast,  they  had  spent  the  morn- 
ing in  fortress  and  abbey,  climbing  to  the  topmost 
perch  available,  penetrating  to  the  deepest  dungeons; 


572  Katharine  Day 

wandering  among  the  huge  supporting  pillars  of  the 
crypt,  or  sunning  themselves  in  the  windowless  arches 
of  the  refectory.  It  was  the  off  season,  and  the  guide 
had  been  indulgent  to  their  whims.  They  had  re- 
turned by  way  of  the  ramparts  to  an  eleven-o'clock 
omelette,  and  as  they  climbed  the  eighty-odd  steps, 
hewn  out  of  the  face  of  the  rock,  that  led  from  kitchen 
and  dining-room  of  the  famous  inn  to  one  of  its  high- 
perched  dependencies,  Archie  had  cried: 

"I  say,  Katherine!  What  a  traveller  you  are! 
I  had  no  idea  a  girl  was  equal  to  such  a  pace  as  we 
have  been  keeping  up  ever  since  we  left  Paris!" 

"  I  'm  very  strong,  you  know,"  she  had  answered, 
"and  horribly  insatiate." 

Of  a  truth,  the  zest  with  which  Katherine  had 
carried  out  this  somewhat  taxing  programme,  her 
freshness  and  vigor  now,  after  several  weeks  of  un- 
intermittent  sight-seeing,  were  not  a  little  gratifying 
to  Archie,  who  had  imagined  that  he  should  have  to 
take  an  occasional  "brace"  of  patience  in  the  new 
role  of  "prop"  which  he  had  impulsively  assumed. 
They  had  not  been  a  week  among  the  chateaux  of 
Touraine,  however,  before  he  had  discovered  his 
error;  and  he  was  even  sometimes  a  trifle  sceptical 
as  to  that  nightmare  which  his  sister  had  apparently 
improvised  out  of  the  kindness  and  solicitude  of  her 
heart. 

And  yet — there  were  moments  when  some  trifling 
change  of  countenance  or  turn  of  phrase  on  Katherine 's 
part  recalled,  like  an  echo,  the  subtle  inflection  of  her 
voice,  the  wistful  look  of  her  eyes,  as  she  had  cried, 
out  of  the  brightness  of  the  gay  Paris  streets  :  "Oh^ 
Archie!  it  will  be  such  a  comfort  to  have  someone  to 
depend  upon  after  all  these  years!" 


Mont  St.   Michel  573 

Well,  doubtless  she  did  depend  upon  him, — he 
would  assure  himself,  with  a  pleasant  sense  of  satis- 
faction,— though  not  with  the  feminine  weakness 
that  would  have  been  more  obviously,  more  super- 
ficially appealing. 

That  they  had  been  travelling  hard,  Archie  knew, 
for  he  had  observed  in  himself  a  quite  unprecedented 
inclination  to  early  hours  which  could  only  be  ac- 
counted for  on  the  theory  of  unusual  fatigues;  and, 
since  Katherine  was  holding  out  so  famously,  he  was 
glad  to  draw  the  inference  that  she  would  be  any- 
thing but  a  drag  upon  their  movements  in  the  coming 
year,  which  they  had  mutually  dedicated  to  far- 
reaching  plans  of  globe-trotting. 

"I  suppose  you  would  like  to  repeat  the  exercises 
of  the  morning  straight  o^er  again,"  he  had  remarked, 
teasingly,  as  Katherine  perched  on  the  stone  parapet 
of  the  terrace,  and  sat  looking  down  among  the  hud- 
dled roofs  and  gay  hanging  gardens  below. 

"Nothing  better,"  she  had  rejoined,  with  exag- 
gerated seriousness.  "I  've  not  had  half  enough." 

"Meanwhile,  do  you  think  you  could  curb  your 
energies  for  a  few  seconds,  while  I  go  and  unpack  the 
Norway  guide-books?  It  's  early  yet,  and  I,  for  one, 
should  n't  mind  loafing  for  an  hour." 

"Oh,  do  get  the  guide-books,  and — here — leave 
me  the  Guide  St.  Michel." 

But  Katherine  did  not  open  the  book.  Instead, 
she  took  a  few  turns,  the  length  of  the  terrace,  with 
the  little  paper  volume  in  her  clasped  hands  behind 
her  back,  while  the  cool  May  sunshine  flecked  her 
hair  and  dress.  And  presently  she  dropped  into  a 
chair,  facing  the  view,  and  fell  into  a  reverie  which 
gradually  became  articulate  in  those  confident  words 


574  Katherine  Day 

of  the  New  England  sage:  "All  loss,  all  pain,  is  par- 
ticular; the  universe  remains  to  the  heart  unhurt." 

Her  eye  traversed  the  wide  reaches  of  sand,  crossed 
only  by  watery  serpentine  channels,  between  which 
the  deep  green  of  some  amphibious  growth  glimmered 
bright  and  yet  elusive.  How  the  level  yellow  floor 
melted  away  at  last  in  the  golden  mist,  scarce  seem- 
ing to  reach  the  wide  curve  of  the  low-lying  Breton 
coast,  broken  here  and  there  by  a  single  tall  tree  or 
a  sharp  roof  that  only  served  rto  accentuate  the 
insubstantiality  of  this  vision  of  the  mainland. 

Moving  cloud  shadows  were  enacting  a  ghostly 
drama  on  that  treacherous  waste,  fraught,  as  she 
knew,  with  quicksands.  How  nobly  the  great  Mount 
towered  above  them!  What  a  rock  of  refuge  it 
formed,  there  among  the  shifting,  treacherous  sands! 
Katherine  wondered  why  this  seemed  like  a  loftier 
vantage-ground  than  many  a  summit  of  ten  times 
its  height, — and  at  once  the  answer  came.  It  was 
the  isolation — the  detachment.  It  was  like  looking 
from  some  lonely  height  of  personal  experience  off  to 
the  great  mainland  of  life.  There  it  lay,  out  there, 
not  remote,  but  utterly  apart;  the  actual,  the  diffi- 
cult, the  all  but  intolerable,  floating  in  a  golden  mist 
of  beauty. 

And  little  by  little  Katherine  forgot  the  palpable 
dream  spread  out  before  her,  while  her  mind  lost  it- 
self in  that  inward  vision  it  was  so  fair  a  symbol  of. 
For  to-day  she  was  sufficiently  at  peace  for  quiet 
contemplation ;  to-day  she  could  venture  to  face  the 
immediate  past, — that  near,  that  poignant  past, 
which  may  sometimes  be  so  much  more  appalling 
than  the  worst  menace  of  the  future. 

To-day,  for  the  first  time,  she  could  think  tran- 


Mont  St.   Michel  575 

quilly  and  reasonably  of  these  things, — of  the  weeks 
she  had  spent  alone  with  Winny, — of  the  sharp  mis- 
givings, the  desolating  compunctions,  that  had  visit- 
ed her,  when,  not  infrequently,  the  Winny  she  so 
ardently  desired  to  believe  in  rang  false  as  any  coun- 
terfeit coin.  She  could  think  now  of  those  torturing 
doubts,  for  their  chief  sting  had  been  removed, — not 
by  any  fundamental  rehabilitation  of  Winny,  but 
by  the  simple,  sensible  acquiescence  of  Tom.  She 
could  think  now  of  the  days  immediately  preceding 
his  arrival,  when  the  words  of  his  letter  were  knock- 
ing at  her  heart  like  the  admonition  of  an  accusing 
angel; — when  Winny  clung  to  her  and  would  not  let 
her  go,  until  he  should  come. 

All  this  she  could  bear,  because  she  had  also  the 
memory  of  Tom's  face  as  she  had  seen  it  that  one 
evening  which  they  all  three  spent  together,  before 
Archie  came  and  carried  her  away ; — of  the  new  look 
graven  there,  the  dignity,  the  significance  it  had 
gained,  and  which  Winny  must  have  dimly  recog- 
nized, when  she  cried,  "Why  Tom,  how  good  looking 
you  have  grown ! ' ' 

To-day  she  dared  remember  his  gentleness  with 
Winny, — the  chivalrous  reserve  of  his  manner  with 
herself;  she  dared  recall  even  the  pain  of  those  remem- 
bering eyes  when  Winny,  no  longer  fearful  of  Arthur's 
name,  plied  him — and  in  her  presence — with  ques- 
tions about  the  boy.  All  this  she  dared  reflect  upon 
because  she  could  stay  her  soul  on  the  memory  of 
certain  words  he  had  said  to  her,  and  to  her  alone. 

In  answer  to  Winny 's  inquiries  Tom  had  reported 
of  the  voyage,  that  the  sea  had  been  a  mill-pond, — 
just  the  sort  of  sea  he  proposed  to  secure  for  their 
home  trip!  And  Winny,  enamoured  for  the  moment 


576  Katharine  Day 

of  the  thought  of  home,  and  of  care  and  of  kind- 
ness, had  said,  very  prettily,  that  she  should  try  to 
be  a  better  sailor  this  time.  And  they  had  talked  ot 
Rome,  whither  they  were  to  go  in  the  interim,  Tom 
declaring  that  he  was  almost  as  eager  as  Winny  for  a 
sight  of  the  Coliseum. 

And  presently  Winny  had  bethought  herself  of 
Melanie  and  of  some  small  task  she  wished  to  set  her, 
and  had  left  Katherine  and  Tom  alone  together  in 
the  little  pink  satin  salon. 

When  Katherine  came  to  that  point  in  her  medita- 
tions an  unreasoning  contraction  of  the  heart  seized 
her.  It  was  as  if  a  rude  hand  had  swept  away  the 
golden  haze  off  there  and  left  some  grim  headland  of 
the  coast  laid  bare  to  the  sight.  How  she  had  hastened 
to  be  the  first  to  speak  and  to  say  the  most  common- 
place thing  she  could  think  of! 

"  I  am  glad  you  had  such  a  good  voyage,"  she  had 
remarked,  aware  though  she  was  that  such  considera- 
tions were  a  matter  of  complete  indifference  to  Tom. 

And  Tom's  eyes  had  met  hers,  straight  and  clear, 
piercing  the  artificiality  of  her  foolish  speech,  of  her 
foolish  attitude. 

"Katherine,"  he  had  said,  with  a  deep,  straight- 
forward sincerity:  "It  was  a  hideous  storm  from 
start  to  finish.  But  we  made  the  port,  and — we 
know  what  we  owe  the  pilot." 

"What  's  that  you  two  are  talking  about?"  came 
Winny 's  voice  at  the  door.  "You  look  as  solemn  as 
two  owls." 

"Katherine  was  asking  about  the  voyage,"  Tom 
answered,  quietly,  as  he  placed  Winny 's  chair  nearer 
the  light, — for  she  had  brought  her  embroidery  with 
her, — "  I  was  telling  her  what  a  capital  pilot  we  had." 


Mont  St.   Michel  577 

"I  wonder,"  said  Winny,  "that  captains  should 
need  a  pilot  when  they  are  coming  into  their  own 
port." 

"It  seems  they  do,"  he  returned,  while  his  eyes 
sought  Katherine's,  grave  and  steady  and  significant. 
"  I  suppose,  in  some  kinds  of  weather,  the  home  port 
looks  very  strange,  and — there  are  sunken  rocks  that 
only  a  pilot  knows." 

Then  Katherine,  looking  into  those  steady  eyes, 
knew  that  she  had  been  right  about  Tom, — that  she 
had  not  overestimated  either  his  strength  or  his  con- 
science;— that  if  it  had  been  granted  her  to  give  the 
one  turn  to  the  rudder  that  avoided  the  sunken  rock, 
he  was  ready  now  to  steer  his  own  course,  unaided 
and  unurged.  And  with  the  inconsistency  of  poor 
human  nature,  her  heart  sank  at  the  thought;  and 
many  a  time  in  the  weeks  that  followed,  when  she  was 
journeying  with  Archie  in  the  heart  of  sunny  Tour- 
aine,  a  cruel  pang  had  seized  her  at  the  recollection 
of  what  Tom  had  achieved,  of  how  she  might  never 
again  be  called  upon  to  make  a  sacrifice  for  him. 

But  to-day  it  seemed  that  that  selfish  pang  was 
past.  The  pain  remained, — the  old,  old  pain  would 
abide  with  her  as  long  as  she  lived; — that  she  knew. 
And  after?  Ah,  heaven  would  not  be  heaven  with- 
out it! — But  to-day,  at  last,  she  had  reached  a  height 
where  all  that  was  ugly,  all  that  was  egotistical  and 
narrow  and  unworthy  was  lost  in  that  golden  haze 
which  may  sometimes  brood  on  the  high  noon  of 
endeavor. 

At  the  sound  of  Archie's  approaching  step  she 
looked  up,  and  saw  him  crossing  the  flagstones  be- 
fore the  house.  What  a  gallant  figure  he  made,  here, 
on  the  mighty  Rock,  as  yonder  in  the  glamour  and 


37 


578  Katherine  Day 

poetry  of  old  Touraine!  As  he  came  toward  her, 
through  the  sunshine,  with  his  light  step,  the  red 
guide-book  in  his  hand  lending  a  touch  of  color 
to  the  picture,  he  seemed  to  her  like  a  figure  of  old 
romance,  lingering  yet  among  the  relics  of  a  knightly 
past.  Ah! — she  told  herself,  with  a  strong  effort  to 
believe  it, — life  would  never  be  a  blank  while  she  had 
that  figure  to  give  it  point  and  meaning!  How  well 
he  was  looking!  How  his  face  had  cleared,  and  how 
in  tune  he  seemed!  She  was  glad,  after  all,  that  he 
had  left  the  life  there  in  Rome,  glad  they  were  to 
have  a  year  together,  with  the  world  before  them 
where  to  choose.  He  did  enjoy  it;  there  was  no 
doubt  of  that.  He  had  not  appeared  so  to  relish  any- 
thing for — seven  years.  Oh,  they  would  be  happy 
— they  would  be  happy,  they  two,  in  spite  of  night- 
mares ! 

"I  stopped  to  write  a  line  to  Paul,"  Archie  was 
saying,  as  he  drew  near.  "I  left  it  open  in  case  you 
should  have  any  message  for  him." 

"Why,  yes,"  Katherine  returned,  bringing  her 
thoughts  with  some  difficulty  to  bear  upon  the  sub- 
ject. "You  must  give  him  my  congratulations  on 
the  new  chair." 

"Shall  I  tell  him  you  are  sorry  it  's  going  to  take 
him  away  from  Boston?" 

"No — oh,  no!  You  needn't  say  that!  I  think 
it  's  perhaps  quite  as  well  for  him."  Her  eyes  were 
following  a  moving  wagon  that  seemed  fairly  to 
creep  along  the  causeway,  so  deceptive  was  the  feat- 
ureless distance. 

Archie  had  seated  himself  on  the  parapet,  and  was 
apparently  lost  in  contemplation  of  the  view.  Pres- 
ently: 


Mont  St.   Michel  579 

"  How  bully  it  was,  seeing  the  tide  come  in  yester- 
day!" he  remarked. 

"Yes;  how  it  raced!  It  will  be  half  an  hour  later 
this  evening;  just  about  at  sunset." 

"  It  must  be  refreshing  to  that  poor  old  Greve  when 
it  does  come!  I  say,  Katherine," — and  he  suddenly 
fixed  her  face  with  unaccustomed  earnestness, — 
"don't  answer  unless  you  like,  but — had  Paul  any- 
thing to  do  with  your  nightmare?" 

"Paul?"  she  repeated,  wondering.  It  required 
an  effort  of  the  mind  to  remember  that  she  had  ever 
stood  in  any  particular  relation  with  Paul,  so  had  the 
thought  of  him  receded  into  the  dim,  inconsequent 
past.  "Why,  no!  I  hardly  ever  think  of  Paul  now- 
adays,— excepting  to  remember  how  much  we  owe 
him, — you  and  I.  My  nightmares  are  all  of  my  own 
contriving,"  she  added  as  she  came  and  sat  be- 
side Archie  on  the  stone  coping,  and  drew  in  an  ap- 
preciative whiff  from  his  cigarette.  "  I  'm  not  always 
as  manageable  as  I  ought  to  be  at  my  age.  That  's 
all." 

"At  your  age!     Twenty-eight  is  n't  any  age!" 

"It  's  the  best  I  have,"  she  jested.  But  Archie 
was  too  serious  for  that. 

"Paul  would  say  that  you  were  never  manageable 
at  any  age,"  he  persisted,  studying  his  sister's  face 
with  grave  interest. 

"Perhaps  now  he  sees  that  it  was  better  so,"  she 
answered,  musingly.  "At  any  rate,  he  's  getting  to 
be  so  distinguished  that  I  don't  believe  he  bothers 
much  about  me."  The  logic  of  the  remark  was  a 
trifle  obscure;  but  logic  had  always  proved  but  a 
broken  reed  where  Paul  was  concerned. 

"I  wonder  why  you  couldn't  fancy  him,"  Archie 


580  Katherine  Day 

speculated.  The  writing  of  his  letter  had  brought 
Paul  so  vividly  before  him  that  his  mind  could  not 
detach  itself  at  once  from  the  subject. 

"I  'm  sure  I  don't  know,  for  he  was  everything  a 
girl  could  ask;  and  I  did  try,  I  did  indeed — on  your 
account,  Archie!" 

"  As  if  trying  were  any  good ! "  Then,  with  a  sudden 
change  of  mood,  which  was  refreshing  to  them  both  : 
"It  seems  as  if  the  brother  and  sister  game  were  the 
only  one  you  and  I  were  up  to,  Katherine, — and  I 
swear  we  '11  make  a  go  of  that!" 

"We  always  have!"  she  answered,  with  a  con- 
fident little  smile.  "Only  we  never  had  half  a 
chance  before." 

"Well,  we  've  got  it  now,  and  it  's  my  opinion  that 
we  're  going  to  make  a  howling  success  of  it.  If  we 
don't  ransack  the  ages,  spoil  the  climes,  in  the  next 
twelve  months,  I  lose  my  bet!" — and,  suddenly 
quitting  his  improvised  seat,  Archie  fell  upon  Murray's 
Hand-Book  of  Norway,  and  began  reading  unpro- 
nounceable Scandinavian  names,  with  a  judicious 
combination  of  Italian  vowels  and  German  conson- 
ants that  would  have  baffled  the  understanding  of  a 
Norseman. 

It  was  very  delightful, — this  guide-book  work  with 
all  it  promised.  To  Archie,  especially,  who  had  joy- 
fully thrown  off  the  depression  and  the  agitations  of 
the  Paris  experience,  this  freedom  to  make  plans,  and 
the  equal  freedom  to  break  them,  was  truly  congenial ; 
and  it  was  thanks  to  his  taste  for  the  impromptu  in 
.travel  that  they  were  snatching  a  bit  of  Normandy 
and  Brittany  on  their  northward  trip.  Owing  to 
this  change  of  plan  their  letters  had  doubtless  been 
accumulating  for  ten  days  past  in  the  London  lodg- 


Mont  St.   Michel  581 

ings  where  brother  and  sister  were  to  join  the  Delanos 
on  their  way  to  the  Midnight  Sun,  and  it  was  not  until 
yesterday  that  they  had  telegraphed  Munroe  in  Paris 
to  forward  once  to  Mont  St.  Michel. 

"I  shall  quite  hate  to  have  the  letters  come," 
Archie  remarked,  as  he  closed  his  Murray.  "  I  'm 
so  afraid  they  '11  break  the  spell!" 

"It  doesn't  seem  as  if  anything  could  do  that," 
Katherine  answered,  dreamily.  "I  can't  even  make 
those  preposterous  names  you  are  mispronouncing 
seem  like  plain  prose.  I  believe  if  our  letters  were 
to  arrive  this  moment — " 

"  Pardon,  Monsieur!  Pardon,  Mademoiselle!  Voila 
un  depeche!"  and  a  harmless  bit  of  blue  paper  was 
placed  in  Archie's  hands. 

"What  the  dickens!"  he  exclaimed,  absently  ex- 
tracting a  small  coin  from  his  pocket;  and  then, 
observing  that  the  messenger  was  an  elderly  woman, 
much  out  of  breath,  substituting  therefor  a  larger 
piece. 

Was  the  spell  broken?  Or  was  it  only  intensified 
by  the  words  he  read? — so  unreal, — so  incredible 
were  they! 

"If  possible,  come  at  once. 

"TOM." 

Archie  handed  the  little  paper  to  Katherine.  They 
looked  at  one  another,  dazed,  bewildered;  and  then, 
swiftly  but  mechanically,  they  went  about  their 
preparations  for  departure. 

It  was  not  until  they  sat,  half  an  hour  later,  the 
only  passengers  in  the  old  black  becurtained  barge, 
driving  the  slow  length  of  the  causeway  toward  Pon- 
torson,  that  they  lent  their  minds  to  speculation. 
Archie  was  the  first  to  speak. 


582  Katharine  Day 

"I  suppose,"  he  muttered,  half  under  his  breath, — 
"I  suppose  it  means  that  Winny  is  ill, — dying,  per- 
haps,— who  knows?" 

"Oh,  not  that!"  Katherine  cried,  in  terror  at  hear- 
ing her  own  shrinking  thought  put  into  words.  "  Not 
that,  Archie!  Anything  but  that!" 


CHAPTER    XVII 
WINNY'S  MECCA 

"Good  to  forgive; 
Best  to  forget! 
Living,  we  fret; 
Dying,  we  live." 

TOM,  meanwhile,  in  his  own  unpretending  com- 
mon-sense fashion,  had  been  making  the  best 
of  life  as  it  presented  itself  for  his  acceptance.  It  was 
not  what  he  had  so  confidently  demanded  at  the 
hands  of  fate; — it  was  not  even  what  his  deliberate 
judgment,  his  unaided  conscience,  had  dictated.  But 
it  was  what  had  been  finally  revealed  to  him  as  right, 
and  therefore  inevitable.  In  obeying  Katherine's 
summons,  to  be  sure,  he  had  acted  under  a  relentless 
compulsion,  and  that  coercion  of  the  will  which  had 
been  practised  upon  him  could  scarcely  have  accom- 
plished itself  without  evoking  the  "hideous  storm" 
he  had  so  narrowly  weathered.  Thanks,  however, 
to  a  tough  moral  fibre  no  less  than  to  the  clear  vision 
of  the  pilot,  he  had  made  his  port. 

As  the  time  drew  near  when  he  was  to  meet  Winny 
he  had  found  himself  regarding  her  in  the  old  light, — 
that  of  a  primary  obligation, — and  to  a  recognized 
obligation  Tom  had  never  yet  failed  to  respond.  For 
years  he  had  schooled  himself  in  a  loyalty  of  life  as 


584  Katherine  Day 

impeccable  as  the  loyalty  of  his  business  dealings; 
for  years  he  had  forced  himself  to  recognize  in  this 
relation,  so  rashly  assumed,  so  bitterly  repented  of, 
a  bond  as  authoritative  as  any  which  he  was  capable 
of  contracting.  If  he  had  brought  himself  to  believe 
that  the  contract  might,  by  mutual  consent,  be 
honorably  annulled,  it  was  because  he  had,  under 
the  stress  of  an  overmastering  experience,  lost  sight 
of  the  fact  that  he  was  the  one  responsible  party  to 
it.  He  had  honestly  believed,  he  believed  still,  that 
Winny  might  easily  be  persuaded  to  set  her  hand  to 
its  dissolution ;  but  Katherine,  with  the  swift  insight 
which  is  often  surer  than  logic,  had  seized  at  once 
upon  the  weak  point  in  his  argument.  In  the  very 
heat  of  contest  she  had  perceived  that  all  his  careful 
reasoning  must  be  brought  to  naught  by  Winny's 
weakness,  by  Winny's  need. 

In  a  word,  as  Tom  would  now  have  put  it,  the  other 
party  to  the  bond  was  unfit  to  act  in  the  matter ;  to 
induce  her  acquiescence  would  be  like  taking  advan- 
tage of  a  minor  whose  interests  he  was  bound  to 
guard.  And  hence  it  was  that  he  met  Winny,  not 
only  prepared  for  the  pettiness,  the  artificiality,  the 
instability  of  purpose  and  of  feeling,  which  had  so 
tormented  Katherine 's  conscience,  but  prepared  also 
to  find  in  these  very  defects  an  added  motive  for  that 
acceptance  of  the  inevitable  to  which  he  was  steeled. 

Each  day  that  he  passed  in  Winny's  society  made 
more  manifest  her  need  of  protection.  He  saw  her,  as 
it  were,  unnerved,  unbalanced,  by  the  bit  of  sorrow, 
the  bit  of  loneliness,  the  bit  of  pique,  she  had  under- 
gone. He  knew  well  that  her  sorrow  was  not  deep, 
and  he  believed  that  pique  was  as  dignified  a  name 
as  her  newly  awakened  interest  in  Archie  deserved. 


Winny's  Mecca  585 

But  he  did  not  therefore  underestimate  the  power  of 
these  alternating  emotions  upon  a  nature  correspond- 
ingly weak  and  vacillating. 

It  was  all  a  matter  of  proportion.  He  perceived 
that  her  fanciful,  intermittent  mourning  for  the  child 
was  as  severe  a  strain  upon  her  lighter  nature  as  his 
own  profound  bereavement  had  imposed  upon  his; 
and  he  felt  assured  that  her  childish  hankering  for 
Archie's  affection  was  a  more  serious  menace  to  her 
than  the  master  passion  of  his  love  for  Katherine 
could  ever  prove  to  him. 

Once  clear  in  his  own  mind,  then,  that  Winny  was 
still,  and  must  henceforth  be,  his  paramount  obliga- 
tion, he  resumed  the  old  relation  with  the  simplicity 
and  the  sincerity  which  were  characteristic  of  him, — 
and  with  that  generous  admission  of  its  justice  which 
was  so  reassuring  to  Katherine 's  harassed  soul. 

And  so  they  parted,  only  more  faithful  friends  than 
ever, — these  two  who  had  come  so  near  to  attaining 
the  one -gift  that  is  greater  than  friendship; — they 
parted,  each  pledged  tacitly,  but  with  all  the  force 
of  a  strong  will  and  an  indomitable  conscience,  to 
live  as  if  they  had  known  naught  of  that  better 
gift. 

And  Tom  and  Winny  journeyed  southward,  in 
amity  at  least,  and  when  they  came  to  Rome  they 
tried  at  least  to  think,  each  in  his  own  fashion,  that 
their  Mecca  was  reached  at  last. 

For  they  had  this  in  common, — that  Tom,  as  well 
as  Winny,  had  all  his  life  dreamed  of  Rome.  He  had 
always  had  a  predilection  for  the  ancient  Romans, — 
those  manly,  practical,  executive  conquerors  of  the 
world, — and  he  found  much  satisfaction  in  the  tangi- 
ble evidences  of  their  power  that  met  the  eye  in  their 


586  Katharine  Day 

ancient  capital.  If  the  heart  must  be  starved,  the 
mind  at  least  might  be  fed. 

Indeed,  Tom  was  not  the  man  to  reject  such  meagre 
compensation  as  offered.  If  he  had  had  the  misfor- 
tune to  lose  his  right  hand,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that 
he  would  scarcely  have  waited  for  the  pain  to  moderate 
before  taking  his  left  under  special  training.  He  had 
lost  something  far  more  precious,  more  vital  to  his 
happiness  than  his  right  hand, — he  felt  himself 
maimed  more  cruelly  than  that, — and  he  was  suffer- 
ing still,  suffering  profoundly.  But,  meanwhile,  here 
was  Rome,  here  was  the  capital  of  the  Caesars,  those 
men  who  put  the  world — including,  doubtless,  many 
a  heartache — under  their  feet!  And  if  there  was 
anything  the  old  records  had  to  say  to  him,  he  was 
there  to  hear  it. 

He  probably  enjoyed  his  wanderings  among  the 
ruins  and  the  excavations,  the  tombs  and  the  deso- 
lated pleasure-grounds,  none  the  less  for  the  fact  that 
he  was  mostly  unaccompanied.  There  was  some- 
thing in  Winny's  personality  that  scarcely  composed 
well  with  the  hoary  fragments  of  an  heroic  past.  And 
yet,  he  rather  wondered  why,  on  the  single  occasion 
when  she  had  consented  to  set  foot  within  the  Forum. 
That  flower  over  there  which  had  planted  itself,  heaven 
knew  how,  in  the  crevice  of  a  fallen  column,  did  but 
lend  an  added  grace  to  the  picture.  The  ragged  little 
barefoot,  sunning  himself  at  the  base  of  the  Arch  of 
Fabius,  seemed  as  native  to  the  spot  as  any  fragment 
of  antiquity  with  which  the  ground  was  strewn.  Only 
Winny,  in  spite  of  her  crape  and  her  languor,  in  spite, 
too,  of  her  flower-like  face  and  form,  made  a  small, 
shrill  dissonance  that  grated  upon  those  nerves  which 
Tom  would  stoutly  have  denied  the  possession  of. 


Winny's  Mecca  587 

It  was  when  they  drove  together  on  the  Pincian 
Hill,  or  in  the  Borghese  Park,  that  the  figure  of 
Winny  lent  itself  naturally  to  the  scene ;  and  the  two 
never  got  on  better  than  on  these  occasions  when  they 
were  disporting  themselves,  in  sufficient  style  to  grat- 
ify Winny,  behind  a  pair  of  horses  and  a  coachmar 
in  livery. 

It  was  at  such  a  favorable  moment  as  this,  when 
their  little  victoria  wound  in  the  gay  procession  among 
the  trees  and  the  serried  busts  of  the  Pincian, — when, 
moreover,  the  Queen  with  her  scarlet  liveries  had 
passed  them,  with  a  gracious  acknowledgment  of  lifted 
hat  and  beaming  smile, — that  Tom  ventured  upon  the 
subject  of  the  return  voyage.  He  had  left  things  very 
much  at  loose  ends,  and  he  was  impatient  to  get  back. 

"Yes,  Winny,"  he  agreed,  good-naturedly, — "I 
think  she  really  did  mean  that  bow  for  us,  and  I  only 
hope  she  appreciated  that  our  intentions  were  equally 
flattering!" 

"Oh,  you  needn't  make  fun!"  Winny  retorted, 
with  a  not  unfriendly  pout.  "  You  care  just  as  much 
for  royalties  as  I  do; — only  you  must  have  yours 
several  million  generations  old !  If  you  thought  there 
was  any  chance  of  Julius  Caesar  coming  along,  you  'd 
be  the  first  to  get  down  and  let  him  walk  over  you ! " 

"I  should  like  to  have  the  chance!"  Tom  laughed. 
This  was  quite  a  sally  for  Winny ;  he  was  half  inclined 
to  think  she  was  beginning  to  get  an  inkling. — "  And, 
— speaking  of  Julius  Caesar, — have  you  ever  been  to 
Bar  Harbor?" 

"No!  What  has  that  to  do  with  Julius  Caesar?" 
— and  she  gave  him  a  look  of  quick  suspicion. 

"Nothing  particular!  But — I  was  thinking — if  we 
should  decide  to  go  home  early  in  July,  how  would  you 


588  Katherine  Day 

like  to  spend  the  rest  of  the  summer  there?  You 
might  invite  your  mother  to  go  with  you." 

"Why,  yes!  I  think  it  would  be  very  nice.  I  've 
always  wanted  to  go  to  Bar  Harbor." 

"  Supposing  you  were  to  write  and  suggest  it  to  your 
mother,  so  that  she  could  arrange  for  it." 

"Dear  me!  I  wish  I  could  have  Katherine!  She  's 
a  great  deal  better  company.  I  wonder  whatever  put 
it  into  her  head  to  stay  over  here — just  as  I  'm  going 
home!  I  suppose — " 

"Well;  it  seems  natural  enough,  now  that  she  and 
Archie  can  get  off  together.  Strikes  me  it  's  a  great 
scheme,  their  going  to  Greece  and  to  Japan,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it.  I  don't  know  when  I  've  heard  of  anything 
so  jolly." 

Winny  glanced  at  her  companion.  The  carriage 
had  drawn  up  near  the  band-stand,  and  Tom's  gaze, 
as  his  eye  rested  upon  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's, — 
floating  like  a  disembodied  spirit  above  the  city, — 
had  grown  quite  remote  and  almost  melancholy. 

"It  seems  to  me,"  Winny  retorted,  with  her  small, 
dry  censoriousness — "it  seems  to  me  a  dreadfully  sel- 
fish thing  to  go  travelling  about  for  a  whole  year  just 
for  pleasure." 

Tom's  gaze  returned  from  its  little  excursion,  but 
Winny  was  not  quick  enough  to  catch  the  look  that 
crossed  his  countenance. 

"Oh,  well!"  he  rejoined.  "We  can't  expect  all  the 
world  to  be  as  domestic  and  generally  exemplary  as 
we  married  people." 

"I  do  hate  the  word  'domestic',"  Winny  cried. 
"Don't  you?" 

"I  do,  indeed!"  Tom  admitted,  with  fervor.  "I 
believe  I  was  trying  to  make  a  joke!" 


Winny's  Mecca  589 

It  had  been  about  as  near  an  approach  to  conversa- 
tion as  he  had  yet  achieved  with  Winny,  and  it  had,  at 
least,  the  advantage  of  a  concession  gained.  For  it 
appeared  that  they  were  really  to  sail  for  home  the 
last  of  June.  Well,  that  was  something  to  look  for- 
ward to.  Tom  had  not  realized  how  homesick  he  was 
for  his  desk  and  that  rather  exasperating  Harris.  He 
wondered  if  the  prodigal  son,  reduced  to  short  rations, 
had  not  perhaps  found  himself  smacking  his  lips  over 
the  husks! 

And  presently  Winny  tired  of  her  Mecca,  and  be- 
came conscious  of  certain  aching  voids  in  her  outfit 
which  only  Paris  could  supply; — with  the  result  that 
they  were  quitting  Rome  to-morrow. 

It  was  the  middle  of  May,  and  Tom,  nothing  loth 
to  take  the  first  step  toward  home,  fell  in  with  all 
Winny's  plans.  Only,  this  last  morning,  he  would 
leave  her  with  Melanie  and  her  packing,  while  he  went 
to  have  a  look  at  a  certain  Columbarium  that  was 
emerging  from  a  thousand  years'  burial  outside  the 
city  walls. 

He  spent  an  hour  there,  wandering  about  in  the 
hot  sunshine,  stooping  now  and  then  to  pick  up  a 
fragment  of  ancient  sculpture,  until,  presently,  he 
came  upon  a  bit  of  a  baby  foot,  roughly  modelled, 
rudely  chipped, —  the  merest  hint  of  a  baby  foot, 
—  yet  with  such  a  strange,  such  a  seizing  resem- 
blance to  a  little  foot  that  had  been  to  him  one  of  the 
wonders  of  creation,  only  a  short  while  ago,  that  his 
heart  smote  him  at  the  sight. 

"Could  I  buy  that?"  he  asked  of  the  guardian. 

"That?"  quoth  the  Italian,  contemptuously.  "But 
it  is  nothing — that!  Ecco,  Signore! — Una  piccolo, 
testa! — almost  complete,  for  five  lire" 


5QO  Katherine  Day 

"  I  will  give  you  five  lire  for  this,"  Tom  answered ; — 
and  he  carried  the  little  foot  in  his  hand,  as  he  retraced 
his  steps  toward  the  city  gate. 

He  was  walking,  and  the  way  was  long, — but  not 
too  long.  Somehow  he  felt  more  companioned  than 
he  had  done  in  all  that  Roman  visit.  Now  and  again 
he  would  pause  and  examine  the  little  foot,  pondering 
upon  many  things. 

How  he  used  to  dread  Winny's  influence  over  the 
child,  he  was  thinking,  as  he  trudged  along  the  dusty 
road.  How  integral  a  part  of  his  dissatisfaction  with 
her,  that  dread  had  formed !  Was  that  why  he  seemed 
less  to  do  violence  to  himself  in  his  relation  with  her, 
now,  than  in  the  old  days  ?  There  was  nothing  more  to 
dread  for  Arthur, — alas,  nothing  more!  No  frivolity, 
no  disingenuousness,  could  contaminate  the  little  com- 
rade now.  He  was  safe  and  far — ah,  how  far!  Tom 
looked  up  at  the  great  Italian  sky.  It  seemed  as  high, 
as  remote,  as  heaven.  He  lifted  the  little  stone  foot 
and  pressed  it  surreptitiously  to  his  cheek;  and  then, 
as  he  passed  within  the  city  walls,  he  hid  it  away  in  his 
breast  pocket,  and  walked  on,  glad  of  the  hard,  cold 
pressure  of  it  against  his  heart. 

He  did  not  mean  to  show  the  little  foot  to  Winny. 
If  she  should  not  understand,  he  could  not  bear  it,  and 
— ah!  how  could  he  bear  it,  if  she  did  understand! 

It  was  close  upon  dinner-time  when  Tom  reached 
the  hotel,  and  Winny  hated  to  be  late.  He  looked  in 
at  their  little  parlor,  to  tell  her  not  to  wait  for  him,  and 
Melanie,  hearing  his  step,  came  and  met  him  at  the 
door. 

Madame  was  ill, — she  was  souffrante.  Melanie 
thought  it  was  more  than  headache.  She  had  seen 
Madame  suffering, — but  not  like  that;  not  true  suffer- 


Winny's  Mecca  591 

ing.  Would  Monsieur  go  to  her  room,  and  see  for 
himself? 

Yes;  it  was — true  suffering; — there  could  be  no 
doubt  of  that.  Tom  recognized  it  on  the  instant,  as 
that  which  Miss  Hancock  had  feared  for  the  girls, — 
that  which  he  himself  had  feared  for  Arthur.  It  was 
the  Roman  fever. 

In  the  days  that  followed,  when,  for  a  little  while, 
the  case  appeared  to  be  a  light  one,  Tom  meditated  a 
good  deal  upon  that  somewhat  hackneyed  subject,  the 
irony  of  fate.  How  everything  had  seemed  to  con- 
spire to  keep  Winny  out  of  Rome! — Miss  Hancock, 
Grandmother  Day,  his  own  determination.  But  all 
the  time  fate  was  quietly,  imperceptibly  clearing  the 
way  for  her.  Miss  Hancock  as  travelling  companion, 
had  been  exchanged  for  himself — on  the  whole,  the 
most  improbable  candidate  for  the  position  that 
could  have  been  discovered.  Then  Archie's  career 
had  to  be  interrupted  in  order  to  circumvent  Grand- 
mother Day ; — and  deep  down  at  the  bottom  of  it  all 
was  the  ultimate  sacrifice, — Arthur's  death.  Because 
Arthur  had  died, — and  Tom's  hand  stole  to  his  breast 
pocket,  and  clasped  the  little  stone  foot, — because 
Arthur  had  died,  Archie's  career  had  been  broken,  and 
he,  Tom,  had  found  himself  relegated  once  more  to  the 
incongruous  role  he  had  once  for  all  blundered  into. 

His  thoughts  used  to  get  a  good  deal  involved  in 
this  labyrinth.  There  was  nothing  particularly  con- 
secutive about  them, — only  a  general  impression  that, 
under  fate,  Winny  was  perhaps  the  most  potent  in- 
fluence that  had  made  itself  felt  in  the  lives  of  three 
apparently  free  agents. 

That  impression  of  her  potency — under  fate — got  so 
strong,  as  he  brooded  over  these  tangled  threads  of 


592  Katherine  Day 

thought,  that  he  was  not  quick  to  take  alarm  at  the 
graver  view  of  her  case  which  doctor  and  nurse  seemed 
inclined  to. 

The  Signora,  in  spite  of  her  apparent  delicacy,  had 
really  an  excellent  constitution,  Tom  assured  the  good 
Sister ;  she  had  scarcely  ever  been  really  ill.  And  nurse 
and  doctor,  glad  to  keep  up  his  courage,  acquiesced  in 
all  his  theories. 

It  was  not  until  the  patient  grew  gently  delirious 
that  Tom  became  anxious, — it  was  not  until  he  stood 
beside  her  one  day  and  perceived  that  she  did  not 
know  him. 

Tom  was  unaccustomed  to  illness;  he  had  never  but 
once  witnessed  the  strange  and  disquieting  phenome- 
non of  a  mind  astray ;  and  when  he  had  assured  him- 
self that  all  association  with  his  own  personality  had 
escaped  that  wandering  intelligence,  he  wrote  again  to 
his  cousins. 

He  had  sent  a  line  to  Katherine  the  evening  Winny 
was  taken  ill, — not  to  alarm  her,  but  merely  to  report 
on  a  fact  of  general  family  interest.  But  to-day  he 
wrote  to  Archie.  He  felt  a  curious  aversion  to  con- 
fessing to  Katherine  that  he  had  let  Winny  grow 
seriously  ill  on  his  hands. 

That  was  the  last  letter  he  wrote ;  for,  as  the  delir- 
ium increased,  the  name  of  Archie  fell  more  and  more 
often  from  the  eager,  fevered  lips, — and  so  it  was  no 
longer  easy  to  write  to  either  of  them  about  it.  And 
now  Winny  had  been  ill  ten  days,  the  fever  increasing 
in  a  steady  flame,  the  name  of  Archie  ever  on  her  lips, 
— and  always  no  gleam  of  recognition  in  her  eyes  for 
Tom. 

"Will  she  live?"  Tom  asked,  at  last.  He  had  not 
before  admitted  any  doubt.  The  admission  of  a  doubt 


Winny's  Mecca  593 

was  like  the  admission  of  some  horrible,  mystical 
blood-guiltiness  on  his  part.  And  yet,  poor  fellow! — 
the  thought  of  Winny's  death  was  as  abhorrent  to  him 
as  it  had  hitherto  been  inconceivable. — "Will  she 
live?"  he  asked. 

And  the  doctor,  seeing  him  so  moved, — this  cold, 
reserved  American, — could  place  but  one  interpreta- 
tion upon  it. 

"Poor  man!"  he  thought  to  himself.  "It's  no 
wonder!  she  must  have  been  a  lovely  creature!" 

"Must  have  been!" — The  doctor  thought  of  her 
already  in  the  past  tense!  And  yet,  for  very  pity,  he 
looked  Tom  in  the  face  and  lied. 

"I  hope  so,"  he  answered.  "There  is  really  every 
hope.  She  is  young, — not  yet  thirty,  you  say.  And 
she  has  a  good  constitution — or  so  you  tell  me.  Oh, 
there  is  every  hope, — every  possible  hope!" 

And  Tom  knew  he  lied.  And  when  he  could  bear 
no  more,  he  picked  up  his  hat,  and  went  out  into  the 
brilliant  Roman  sun,  and  telegraphed  to  Archie. 

It  did  not  occur  to  him  that  his  letters  might  have 
failed  to  reach  them.  They  were  supposed  to  be 
settled  in  London  by  this  time,  and  Munroe  would  be 
sure  to  forward;  because  he  always  carried  out  his 
own  plans,  he  never  questioned  their  having  held  to 
theirs. 

He  hated  to  use  any  unnecessary  words, — to  take 
the  telegraph  operators  and  bank  clerks,  all  along  the 
line,  into  his  confidence.  They  would  understand, 
Katherine  and  Archie.  They  knew  she  was  ill, — 
they  knew  she  was  delirious.  So  he  only  wrote:  "If 
possible,  come  at  once."  It  looked  so  harmless — 
that  little  line — that  he  seemed  hardly  to  mind  it. 

And  yet,  how  authoritative  it  would  be !  "If  possible ! " 
38 


594  Katharine  Day 

As  if  anything  could  make  it  otherwise  than  possible ! 
What  if  they  did  have  to  give  up  the  Midnight  Sun? 
There  would  always  be  time  enough  for  that! 

It  used  to  seem  to  Tom,  in  those  days  when  Winny 
did  not  know  him,  as  if,  at  last,  he  knew  Winny.  He 
felt  that  now,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  she  was 
sincere.  And  in  the  light  of  her  sincerity  he  perceived 
that  she  had  a  soul.  For  years  she  had  denied  it,  for 
years  she  had  trodden  it  under  foot,  but  now,  in  the 
extremity  of  her  bodily  weakness,  the  poor  little  mis- 
handled soul  had  come  to  its  rights.  And  that  soul 
was  all  Archie's. 

"Archie!"  she  would  moan — "Archie!  Why  don't 
you  come?  Why  don't  you  say  you  're  sorry  too! 
Archie!" 

And  Tom  would  sit  watching  there,  in  a  shadowy 
corner  of  the  room,  while  bitter,  scorching  tears, — 
tears  he  had  never  shed  for  Arthur,  tears  he  had  never 
shed  for  Katherine, — burned  his  cheek.  And  in  those 
dark  hours  when  that  plaintive,  persistent  voice 
would  not,  could  not,  cease,  Tom  judged  his  own  soul 
and  found  it  guilty, — guilty  of  a  blindness  that  was 
criminal,  because  it  need  not  have  been, — guilty  of 
a  levity  that  in  him  of  all  others  was  not  to  be  con- 
doned,— guilty  of  a  treachery  to  his  own  better  nature 
that  had  involved  four  lives  in  disaster.  Nay, — was 
not  Arthur  as  much  a  victim  as  any  of  them  all? 

But  at  that  his  soul  revolted.  Arthur  was  no 
victim !  That  dear  young  life  had  been  its  own  best 
justification, — happy,  wholesome,  beneficent, — quick- 
ening the  life  of  each  and  all  with  whom  it  came  in 
contact.  A  short  life?  Yes!  But  the  more  perfect, 
the  more  rounded,  the  more  unsullied  for  that!  And 
little  by  little,  with  the  thought  of  the  child  as  a  guid- 


Winny's  Mecca  595 

ing  light,  Tom  groped  his  way  back  to  the  day, — a 
dreary  and  ominous  day,  but  with  light  enough  to 
walk  by,  light  enough  to  live  by,  penetrating  the  low- 
hanging  clouds. 

And  when,  on  the  evening  that  Katherine  and 
Archie  were  due,  the  delirium  yielded,  he  could  meet 
the  wandering,  uncertain  eyes  that  recognized  him 
at  last,  with  the  old,  simple  kindliness  that  the  poor 
child  had  been  learning  to  depend  upon. 

"Am  I  going  to  die,  Tom?"  she  had  whispered, — 
yet  as  if  she  hardly  understood  what  she  was  saying. 

"Not  if  I  can  help  it,  Winny,"  he  returned,  fold- 
ing the  thin  little  hand  in  his  own  firm  grasp, — "not 
if  I  can  help  it!" 

"And  you  were  always  so  strong,"  she  murmured, 
feebly;  "so  strong, — so  strong!" 

She  slept  a  little  from  time  to  time,  and  she  was 
sleeping  when,  at  last,  Tom  heard  the  sound  of  wheels 
stopping  in  the  street  below. 

"  Are  we  in  time? "  Katherine  asked, — for  the  sight 
of  Tom's  face  had  confirmed  her  worst  foreboding. 

"Just  in  time,"  he  answered. 

As  Katherine  drew  near  the  bed,  noiselessly,  as  one 
fain  must  move  at  such  an  hour,  the  eyes  of  the  pa- 
tient opened,  and  fixed  themselves  imploringly  upon 
her. 

"Katherine,"  she  whispered,  with  a  last  flickering 
eagerness, — "Katherine, — where  's  Archie?" 

"He  's  here,  dear." 

And  Archie  came,  and,  sinking  upon  one  knee  be- 
side the  bed,  he  lifted  her  gently  in  his  arms. 

"Archie!"  she  cried.     "Archie!" 

"Yes,  darling!     Yes — it  's  I!" 

' '  O  Archie !     Don 't  leave  me ! ' ' 


596  Katherine  Day 

"Never  any  more,  Winny!     Never  any  more!" 

A  little  later,  when  Archie  turned,  a  bowed  and 
broken  figure,  to  leave  the  room,  he  came  face  to  face 
with  Tom. 

"Forgive  me,  Tom,"  he  muttered,  huskily. 

"And  me!"  Tom  answered,  as  their  hands  met  in 
a  grip  that  neither  would  ever  forget. 

And  the  nurse,  seeing  Katherine  the  most  com- 
posed of  them  all,  remarked,  as  she  made  the  sign  of 
the  cross: 

"It  was  well  that  the  fratcllo  arrived  in  time!" 

"Yes,"  said  Katherine,  reverently.     "  It  was  well." 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

THE    BIRD    OF    TIME 

"Waft  of  soul's  wing! 
What  lies  above?" 

THE  ineffable  tenderness  of  death  was  never  more 
gently  manifest  than  when  it  touched  and 
stilled  the  futile  fever  that  had  been  the  life  of  Winny 
Gerald.  Even  as  the  chrysm  of  immortality  seemed 
visibly  to  rest  upon  the  lovely  sleeping  face,  purifying 
and  exalting  it  to  an  unearthly  beauty, — so  the 
thought  of  her  which  dwelt  in  the  hearts  of  those  whom 
she  had  so  wantonly,  yet  in  a  measure  so  unwittingly, 
wronged,  was  transfigured  in  the  light  of  an  inviolable 
loyalty. 

There  was  a  hush  upon  them  all  during  the  little 
time  that  they  remained  together, — a  reserve,  a  re- 
moteness, in  which  they  moved  as  in  a  dream. 

And  no  one  felt  this  mystical  compulsion  more 
deeply  than  Tom.  When,  a  few  days  later,  he  bade 
them  good-bye,  Katherine  knew  that  he  was  still 
estranged  from  life,  still  estranged  from  her, — most 
of  all,  indeed,  estranged  from  her.  And  she  blessed 
him  for  the  remoteness,  the  unrelatedness,  of  his  look, 
when  his  eyes  met  hers  at  parting.  She  could  not 
have  borne  it  otherwise, — she,  whose  soul  too  was 
possessed  of  Winny,  as  the  ear  is  possessed  of  one 


598  Katharine  Day 

haunting  strain  of  music  that  seems  to  have  hushed 
the  very  pulse  of  the  life-blood. 

And  Tom  left  Rome, — the  Rome  of  the  conquerors, 
the  Rome  that  stood  for  that  virile  power  in  man 
which  he  had  worshipped  all  his  life, — awestruck — 
not  by  the  spell  of  heroic  associations,  but  by  the 
passing  of  a  slight  and  fugitive  soul.  He  entered 
upon  the  homeward  journey  bowed  beneath  the 
weight  of  a  profound  experience. 

It  was  no  longer  remorse  that  oppressed  him; — 
indeed  he  dared  not  entertain  remorse.  In  his  clear 
and  logical  mind  his  self-accusations  were  inseparably 
associated  with  shortcomings  in  Winny's  character 
and  conduct  which  he  was  too  magnanimous  willingly 
to  remember.  It  was  nothing  so  personal  as  remorse 
that  weighed  upon  him  in  those  days,  but  rather  that 
overwhelming  sense  of  the  mystery  of  life  and  death, 
whose  power  is  never  greater  than  when  brought 
home  to  a  strong  but  unimaginative  mind.  There 
was  no  surmise  in  the  mental  state  that  dominated 
Tom's  spirit  to-day;  it  was  contemplation,  clear  and 
direct,  of  an  actual  experience,  witnessed  and  shared 
to  the  very  dregs.  And  so  he  went  his  ways,  ab- 
sorbed, possessed; — and  if  his  voyage  hitherward 
had  been  a  hideous  storm,  his  homeward  voyage  was 
a  calm  more  pregnant  and  more  formidable  than  any 
tempest. 

It  was  long  before  Tom  shook  off  the  oppression  of 
that  calm ;  for  days  and  weeks  he  walked  in  voluntary 
subjection  to  it.  He  shrank,  indeed,  from  emerging 
into  a  normal  relation  with  life,  because  he  knew  well 
that  the  revival  of  his  natural  energies  which  such  a 
restoration  would  involve,  must  bring  in  its  train  the 
revival  of  certain  importunities  of  the  spirit  which 


The  Bird  of  Time  599 

he  chose  to  keep  in  immediate  abeyance.  Always, 
deep  down  below  that  strange,  unnatural  calm, 
were  the  vital  currents  of  his  being,  setting  ever  in 
one  direction,  and  he  dared  not  let  the  daylight  in 
upon  them  yet. 

That  scrupulous  consideration  of  Winny's  rights 
which  had  so  often  dominated  his  strongest  impulses 
while  she  lived,  had  lost  nothing  of  its  potency  now 
that  she  had  died.  If  as  his  wife  she  had  been  en- 
titled to  indulgence,  her  memory,  now  that  death  had 
loosed  that  fragile  bond,  must  command  its  full  meed 
of  respect. 

And,  mingling  with  this  punctilious  deference  to 
Winny's  claims,  was  a  resolute  loyalty  to  Katherine. 
He  could  not  do  her  the  wrong  of  implicating  her,  even 
unknown  to  herself,  in  any  transgression  of  those 
rights  in  behalf  of  which  she  had  so  unflinchingly 
sacrificed  herself — and  him.  And  since  the  sacrifice 
had  had  its  perfect  work, — since  they  had  both  been 
saved,  though  so  as  by  fire,  from  a  faithlessness  which 
her  instinct  had  so  unerringly  recognized,  her  con- 
science so  passionately  repudiated, — it  behooved  him 
to  guard  their  common  integrity  until  such  time  as  it 
should  become  merged  in  their  common  happiness. 

He  used  to  think  much  of  Katherine  in  the  days 
when  he  had  returned  to  the  familiar  scenes  so  elo- 
quent of  her,  but  he  thought  of  her  always  in  her 
relation  to  Archie.  He  had  been  profoundly  stirred 
by  Archie's  love  and  grief,  fleeting  as  had  been  the 
expression  of  it.  Tom  knew,  in  a  part  of  his  con- 
sciousness which  he  refused  to  penetrate,  that  no 
abstention  on  his  own  part  would  have  preserved  to 
Archie  the  faith  of  the  girl  he  loved.  He  knew, 
though  it  was  a  part  of  his  loyalty  to  Winny  not  to 


6oo  Katherine  Day 

think  about  it,  that  even  if  she  had  not  married  him 
she  would  scarcely  have  been  deterred  from  making 
some  other  worldly  marriage.  Yet  the  reflection,  for 
all  that,  was  not  less  insufferable,  that  he  should 
have  been  the  instrument  of  Archie's  spoliation.  It 
was  only  when  he  forced  his  mind  away  from  his 
own  dereliction,  and  let  it  dwell  upon  the  thought  of 
Katherine,  cheering  and  sustaining  her  brother,  as 
she  alone  possessed  the  art  of  doing,  that  the  con- 
templation of  Archie's  state  became  tolerable  to  him. 

He  liked  to  imagine  the  brother  and  sister  wander- 
ing in  fair,  foreign  lands.  He  liked  to  remember  the 
fine  endowment  they  had  in  common, — their  natural 
spirits,  their  quickness  of  observation,  their  sensitive- 
ness to  beauty  of  every  sort.  When  he  heard  that 
they  had  gone  to  India,  he  rejoiced  mightily,  and  he 
promptly  provided  himself  with  a  whole  library  of 
Oriental  literature,  that  so  he  might  make  real  to  his 
imagination  the  brilliancy  of  their  experiences.  And 
when,  in  the  spring,  news  came  that  they  were  re- 
turning home  by  way  of  Japan,  he  transferred  his 
attention  to  the  literature  of  that  enchanted  island. 
But  always,  when  he  travelled  with  them  in  spirit, 
he  schooled  himself  to  remember  that  it  was  Archie 
who  was  claiming  Katherine's  exclusive  devotion. 

Nor  did  Tom  exaggerate  the  importance  of  Kath- 
erine's mission  to  her  brother.  For,  in  truth,  if 
Archie  had  never  needed  her  before,  he.  needed  her 
in  those  days  and  weeks  after  Winny  died. 

The  poor  fellow  had  faced  his  pain  at  last ;  he  knew 
there  was  no  escape  from  it.  He  tried  only,  and  with 
a  degree  of  effort  that  was  pathetic  in  one  of  his  pliant 
nature,  to  keep  his  footing  until  the  worst  should  be 
over.  And  when,  after  a  day  or  two,  they  resumed 


The  Bird  of  Time  601 

their  wanderings, — not  toward  the  Midnight  Sun, 
but  here  in  Italy,  deserted  now  of  foreign  travel, — 
he  knew,  and  Katherine  knew,  that  his  spirit  leaned 
upon  hers,  as  a  wounded  man  leans  upon  an  un- 
scathed comrade. 

It  was  characteristic  of  them  both  that  Archie, 
despite  his  native  quickness  of  perception,  should 
never  have  divined  that  his  sister  too  was  passing 
through  deep  waters.  He  was  gratefully,  intimately 
aware  of  her  unobtrusive  comprehension  of  his  own 
sorrow;  and  so  accustomed  was  he  to  regard  Kath- 
erine in  the  light  of  comforter  and  sustainer  of  her 
stumbling  fellow  creatures,  that  he  found  it  natural 
to  interpret  in  terms  of  sisterly  affectioa  and  sym- 
pathy, the  shadow  that  sometimes  rested  visibly  upon 
her.  Yet  he  liked,  best  of  all,  to  associate  her  with 
Winny, — to  dwell  upon  the  thought  of  that  devotion 
which  had  brought  her  to  Winny 's  side;  to  believe 
that  she  too  grieved  for  Winny.  Winny  had  not  been 
fortunate  in  most  of  her  relations  in  life,  but  she  had 
had  a  friend  in  Katherine,  and  it  was  as  Winny's 
friend,  even  more  than  as  his  own  sister  that  he  found 
comfort  in  Katherine 's  society. 

One  day,  at  Orvieto,  where  they  had  been  studying 
the  mosaics  above  the  pointed  doorways  of  the  cathe- 
dral—  the  rain  had  just  ceased,  and  the  sudden 
sun  struck  each  bit  of  stone  into  a  jewel, — they  turned, 
and  wandered  on  to  the  Giardino  Pubblico,  hanging 
like  an  eagle's  nest  above  the  valley,  still  glittering 
with  raindrops.  The  clouds  were  breaking  away,  and 
far  down  below  they  could  see  the  meeting  of  the 
Tiber  with  some  lesser  stream,  the  two  shining  like 
silver  ribbons  where  they  joined. 

"How    well     the     earth     looks     in     diamonds!" 


602  Katharine  Day 

Katherine  remarked.  "See;  there  is  nothing  that 
does  n't  sparkle!  Even  that  grim  old  tower  up  there 
has  a  kind  of  coronet  on ! " 

"Yes!  nature  seems  to  like  diamonds  as  well  as  we 
do!  I  never  cared  for  any  other  stone,  myself." 

And  presently,  pulling  out  a  cigarette,  and  lighting 
it:  "  Katherine,"  Archie  asked, — so  casually  that  she 
hardly  caught  his  meaning, — "would  you  like  to  wear 
Winny's  ring — to  please  me?  Say  so,  if  you  'd  rather 
not,"  he  begged,  imagining  that  she  hesitated.  "Of 
course  it  's  not  what  you  would  call  a  lucky  ring!" 

"  It  was  the  only  lucky  ring  the  poor  child  ever  had," 
she  answered,  gently.  "I  should  love  to  wear  it. 
Where  is  it?" 

"Where  should  it  be?"  he  asked,  drawing  it  from 
an  inner  pocket,  and  holding  it  to  the  light. 

"It  has  outlived  a  good  many  rain  drops,"  he 
remarked,  as  he  made  a  motion  to  take  his  sister's 
hand.  "No — not  on  that  one!"  he  objected,  with 
that  little  air  of  big-brotherliness  which  Katherine 
always  loved  to  see.  "It  might  have  to  abdicate — 
some  day — and  that  would  never  do.  Why  should  n't 
it  come  here,  beside  mother's?" 

"How  pretty  they  are  together!"  she  said,  moving 
her  hand,  that  the  rings  should  catch  the  light. 

"Yes;  and  I  am  glad  ours  is  not  too  small  for  you. 
But  your  fingers  are  slender,  Katherine,  although 
your  hands  are  so  much  larger  than  Winny's." 

"  And  you  have  always  carried  it  ? "  Katherine  asked, 
still  looking,  not  at  him,  but  at  the  sparkling  stone. 

"Of  course!" 

He  flung  his  arm  across  her  shoulder,  and,  reaching 
up,  she  placed  her  hand  in  his.  As  they  walked  along 
the  edge  of  the  high  cliff,  he  fingered  the  ring,  absently. 


The  Bird  of  Time  603 

"I  'm  glad  to  have  you  wear  it,"  he  said,  after 
a  while.  "I  think  it  will  be  happier  now — and  so 
shall  I !  A  ring  like  that  can't  like  to  live  in  the  dark ! ' ' 

The  raindrops,  meanwhile,  were  vanishing  from  the 
earth,  and  only  the  two  stones  flashed  in  the  sun. 

"How  good  it  is  to  have  things  last,"  Archie 
observed,  as  they  paused  a  moment  to  watch  a  film  of 
mist  floating  among  the  treetops  down  below.  "So 
many  things  escape  you !  Now  this  view,  and  all  the 
other  beautiful  sights  that  we  shall  see !  There  will  be 
very  little  left,  even  in  our  memories,  ten  years  from 
now." 

"Yes, — but  it  sinks  in,  and  becomes  a  part  of  us." 

"Truel^And  that  's  what  sometimes  half  kills  you 
—the  things  that  have  sunk  in  and  have  become  a  part 
of  you,  and  yet  that  you  can't  see  any  more."^  And 
presently:  "I  wish  I  could  sketch,"  he  said. 

"  I  wish  you  could !  And  yet  you  could  n't  get  much 
of  that  into  a  sketch.  Do  you  know,  Archie," — with 
a  sudden  glance  from  his  face  to  the  view  and  back 
again — "I  think  words  might  be  better  than  colors 
here.  You  used  to  think  you  would  like  to  write." 

"Was  there  anything  I  didn't  use  to  think  I 
should  like  to  do?" 

"  Perhaps  not!  You  were  always  rather  audacious! 
But  then,  you  know,  I  too  always  thought  you  could 
write." 

"You  thought  I  could  do  anything  I  wanted  to  do." 

"I  still  think  so,  in  a  general  way,"  she  jested. 
"And  in  a  particular  way  I  think  you  could  go  back  to 
the  Aquila  Nera,  and  put  Orvieto  into  words  that 
would  beat  any  sketch.  See, — it  will  rain  again  in  a 
few  minutes ; — that  black  cloud  over  there  is  devouring 
the  sky!  It  makes  one  think  of  the  horrible  Signorellis 


604  Katharine  Day 

in  the  Capella  Nuova.  Just  think  of  the  subject! — the 
Signorellis,  and  the  mosaics  and  the  storm  and  the 
view,  and  those  dear  little  ragamuffins  with  the  eyes; 
and  then  the  Aquila  Nera,  and  the  loquacious  land- 
lady, and  the  head-waiter  that  reproves  her  for  talk- 
ing! Just  try  your  hand  at  it!" 

They  were  walking  swiftly  toward  the  inn,  but  not 
swiftly  enough  to  escape  the  first  big  drops  of  the 
returning  storm.  And  when,  after  changing  her  dress, 
Katherine  looked  in  at  the  tiny  salotto  where  were  no 
other  forestieri  to  intrude,  she  found  Archie  in  a  fine 
frenzy  of  composition  that  was  inspiring  to  witness. 

From  time  to  time,  after  that,  he  did  a  bit  of  writ- 
ing, which  he  sent  home  to  Paul,  and  early  in  the  new 
year  when  the  travellers  were  already  on  the  other  side 
of  the  world,  these  fugitive  sketches  began  appearing 
in  a  leading  New  York  journal,  and  busy  people  found 
time  to  read  them,  and  wished  they  came  oftener. 

One  day  in  the  early  spring  Katherine  was  sitting 
on  the  deck  of  a  big  P.  &  O.  boat,  in  the  shadow  of 
the  forward  mast,  dreaming  of  many  things.  They 
were  crossing  an  arm  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  making  for 
Yokohama,  and  she  found  the  high  forecastle  of  the 
East  Indiaman  a  no  less  congenial  resort  than  the  bow 
of  the  Atlantic  Liner  where  she  had  spent  so  many 
hours  in  April  of  last  year. 

Her  meditations  now,  as  then,  were  much  of  Winny, 
but  to-day  an  older  memory  of  her  than  that  was 
uppermost,  as  she  watched  the  low  horizon  where  the 
blue  sea  melted  into  the  blue  sky, — the  low  hori- 
zon that  was  always  just  as  far  away,  however  the 
big  steamer  strained  and  panted  to  draw  near. 

And  as  she  mused  of  still  another  voyage,  and  of 
the  two  whom  she  had  sailed  the  seas  with  so  many 


The  Bird  of  Time  605 

years  ago,  the  sound  of  Archie's  step,  approaching, 
was  scarce  an  interruption  to  her  reverie.  It  was  with 
that  eager  step,  seldom  so  quickened  nowadays,  that 
he  used  to  come  and  join  them,  on  that  happy  voyage 
when  Winny  was  the  exquisite,  flawless  creature  she 
had  once  more  grown  to  be  in  their  thoughts. 

And  Archie,  coming  close,  and  standing  tall  above 
her,  looked  down  on  Katherine  with  something  of  the 
old  ardor,  the  old  zest  in  life. 

"What  is  it,  dear?"  she  asked,  smiling  an  indolent 
welcome.  "You  look  exactly  as  if  you  knew  some- 
thing pleasant!" 

And,  standing  there  upon  the  level  deck — for  they 
were  sailing  tranquil  seas  unvexed  by  tossing  waves 
— he  drew  a  thick  roll  of  papers  from  under  his  reefer, 
and,  dropping  them  into  her  lap,  he  said,  half  shame- 
facedly : 

"Read  that,  and  if  you  don't  like  it — a  lot — just 
chuck  it  overboard!  Unless  it  's  very  good,  it  's  no 
good  at  all!" 

Whereupon,  and  before  his  receding  step  had  ceased 
to  echo  in  the  distance,  Katherine  began  to  read. 

She  read  for  two  hours,  while  her  breath  came  fast, 
and  her  cheeks  burned,  and  more  than  once  the  tears 
sprang  to  her  eyes.  And  when  she  had  finished,  she 
leaned  her  head  back  against  the  coil  of  ropes,  and 
looked  straight  up  into  the  sky.  She  never  thought  to 
go  and  look  for  Archie,  and  tell  him  he  had  done  a 
wonderful  thing  ;  she  was  in  no  haste  to  talk  about 
it,  even  to  him.  She  liked  better  to  lean  there  against 
the  big  coil  of  ropes,  and  look  straight  up  into  the  In- 
dian sky. 

He  had  called  it:  The  Bird  of  Time — and  on  the 
title  page  were  Omar's  lines: 


606  Katherine  Day 

"The  Bird  of  Time  has  but  a  little  way 
To  flutter — and  the  Bird  is  on  the  Wing." 

It  must  be  a  volume  by  itself, — this  marvellous 
romance,  with  its  swift,  unerring  action,  and  its  heart 
of  fire, — just  a  mere  wisp  of  a  volume.  That  it  could 
never  be  printed  side  by  side  with  other  tales  was 
clear.  It  must  take  its  flight  alone,  like  an  exquisite, 
vagrant  bird  that  has  lost  its  way  in  a  foreign  clime, 
and  finds  no  mate,  no  nesting,  here.  And  how  men's 
eyes  would  dim  at  the  sight, — and  how  women's  hearts 
would  soften  when  it  alighted  for  its  little  hour  beside 
their  lattice! 

All  would  love  the  strange,  exotic  visitant,  with  the 
perfume  of  the  Orient  in  its  wings,  and  the  deeps  of 
a  New  England  woodland  in  its  note.  But  only  she 
and  Archie — and  one  other — would  know  its  name; 
they  alone  would  guess  whence  came  the  little  pilgrim 
of  the  skies. 

Yes,  the  hand  of  death  had  dealt  more  gently  with 
Winny  than  life  had  done.  Kind  death  had  restored 
to  her  every  grace  that  life  had  mocked  her  with,  and 
here,  in  these  fluttering  leaves,  was  the  spirit  of  Winny 
as  she  might  have  been. 

Presently,  after  a  long  interval,  Archie's  step  again 
sounded  on  the  level  deck.  He  came  and  threw  him- 
self down  beside  his  sister,  looking  off  across  the 
water,  from  under  the  visor  of  his  cap,  drawn  low  over 
his  eyes. 

"Well?"  he  queried,  at  last.  "You  did  n't  chuck 
it  overboard?" 

"No!  I  should  have  had  to  go  with  it!  For, — look, 
Archie! — it  's  here,  in  my  heart!'' 

"You  understood?" 

"Yes,  I  understood,'' 


The  Bird  of  Time  607 

"Will  anyone  else?" 

"Only  Tom." 

"And  will  he  mind?" 

"No; — Tom  will  not  mind.     It  will  comfort  him." 

"That  's  right!  Then — we  '11  let  Paul  have  a  try 
with  it!" 

And  when,  early  in  July,  the  travellers  landed  at 
San  Francisco,  The  Bird  of  Time  was  alight  on  every 
bookstall,  and  fluttering  in  the  hands  of  old  and 
young. 

And  Tom,  who  had  crossed  a  continent  to  meet 
them,  wrung  both  their  hands  at  once,  crying: 

"  Everybody  's  reading  it!  And  then,  when  they  've 
read  it — everybody  reads  it  again!" 


CHAPTER    XIX 

A    BIRTHDAY 

"  Feel  where  my  life  broke  off  from  thine, 
How  fresh  the  splinters  keep  and  fine, — 
Only  a  touch  and  we  combine!" 

HOW  good  it  was  to  see  Tom  standing  on  the  pier, 
his  head  bared  in  the  blazing  July  sun !  How 
the  mere  sight  of  him  filled,  for  Katherine,  the 
measure  of  her  content!  She  wanted  nothing  more, 
but  just  to  see  his  face  and  hear  his  voice,  and  when 
his  first  words  were  of  the  book  she  felt  that  all  was 
as  it  should  be. 

He  was  changed, — more  changed  than  either  of  the 
others.  That  sprinkling  of  gray  had  spread,  and  the 
vigorous  chiselling  of  the  face  was  much  accentuated. 
Yet  there  was  nothing  in  the  change  to  regret, — no 
swerving  from  the  essential  significance  of  the  man, 
— only  a  development,  a  working  out  toward  the 
highest  potentiality.  It  needed  no  artist  to-day,  no 
careful  student  of  line  and  shadow,  to  recognize  in 
Tom  McLean  a  man  of  real  distinction  among  his 
fellows.  Ah!  if  Allan  Delano  might  paint  him  now, 
Katherine  thought!  And  ere  she  could  check  the 
audacious  impulse:  "He  shall,  some  day!" — she 
had  said  in  her  heart. 

Katherine  did  penance  for  that  rash  assumption 


A   Birthday  609 

of  hers;  but  penance  and  transgression  alike  were 
her  own  secret. 

It  seemed  to  Tom,  as  he  sat  and  talked  with  her, 
through  the  hot,  dusty,  delectable  hours  of  that  home- 
ward journey,  as  if  she  had  grown  younger  and  fairer 
since  they  parted.  Her  eyes  had  somehow  the  look 
of  one  who  has  quaffed  of  the  spring, — not  of  forget- 
fulness, — but  of  a  universal  reconciliation;  that 
droop  of  lip  and  lid  that  had  made  for  the  sadness  of 
maturity  in  her  face,  had  somehow  vanished.  The 
possibility  of  tender  comprehensions  remained,  but 
to-day,  at  least,  it  cast  no  shadow  there.  And  as 
they  talked  together,  of  many  things, — of  the  book — 
of  foreign  lands — of  home  matters, — of  all,  indeed, 
but  the  one  thing  that  had  set  their  pulses  to  a  music 
which  needed  not  the  interpretation  of  words, — they 
were  conscious  of  no  impatience  for  fulfilment.  The 
sure  promise  of  their  lives  sufficed. 

Archie  was  not  very  much  with  them;  he  liked 
better  to  sit  among  the  smokers,  gathering  copy,  per- 
haps,— or  did  he  feel  himself  the  third  in  their  little 
party?  Had  his  natural  perception  reasserted  it- 
self, now  that  his  heart  had  had  its  say, — now  that 
his  genius  had  wrought  the  ransom  of  his  spirit?  If 
that  were  so,  he  gave  no  sign,  either  then  or  in  the 
months  that  followed,  when  gradually  their  small 
world  came  to  apprehend  the  truth. 

At  first  it  seemed  only  that  Tom  and  Katherine 
had  resumed  the  old  cousinly  good  comradeship.  At 
first  it  seemed  so  natural  that  they  should  walk  to- 
gether, and  ride  together,  that  Tom  should  be  forever 
at  the  house,  telling  Katherine  everything  that  con- 
cerned him,  hearing  everything  that  concerned  her, 
— making  her  play  all  the  things  he  used  to  love,  then 

39 


6io  Katherine  Day 

interrupting  her  to  tell  her  something  more, — at  first 
this  seemed  so  like  the  good  old  times,  that  no  one 
understood, — no  one  but  Grandmother  Day,  and, 
possibly,  Archie.  The  cousins  had  used  to  be  great 
friends,  it  was  remembered,  and,  now  that  the  old 
conditions  were  restored,  what  could  be  more  natural 
than  this  resumption  of  the  old  relation? 

And  there  was  naught  to  restrict  that  happy  in- 
tercourse ;  for  Katherine  was  always  at  the  old  home 
now,  pledged  indeed  to  Grandmother  Day  for  the 
one  year. 

"You  have  been  gone  a  long  time,  my  dear,"  her 
grandmother  had  said  to  her,  "and  I  have  missed 
you  very  much.  So  you  must  make  up  your  mind 
to  play  the  model  granddaughter  for  a  while  at  least. 
After  this  year,"  she  added,  with  one  of  those  pene- 
trating glances  that  always  made  Katherine  feel  like 
a  very  little  girl, — "after  this  year  you  may  go  back 
to  your  nursing — if  you  like ! ' ' 

And  Katherine,  with  a  hasty  assent,  had  turned 
her  face  away,  lest  the  wise  old  eyes  should  fathom 
her  most  secret  consciousness. 

And  Tom  did  not  press  the  issue.  He  was  her 
faithful  squire,  he  told  himself,  and  nothing  more  to 
all  time,  if  she  willed  it  so.  But  he  knew  her  better 
than  that.  He  knew  that  just  as  surely  as  the  spring 
was  at  hand  and  the  queenly  summer, — just  as  surely 
and  by  just  as  natural  an  unfolding,  would  the  fruition 
of  his  hope  perfect  itself. 

And  on  the  first  day  of  June,  which  was  Katherine 's 
birthday,  he  went  to  her.  It  was  a  busy  season  on 
the  stock  market;  many  interests  were  pending  there, 
and  much  was  at  stake.  But  all  that  might  go  by 
the  board.  He  would  not  grime  his  mind  with  busi- 


A   Birthday  611 

ness  on  this  birthday  of  Katherine's,  that  had  some- 
how come  to  seem  to  him  the  birthday  of  their  new 
life. 

He  bore  no  gift  for  her — not  so  much  as  a  handful 
of  flowers.  He  had  never  sent  her  a  flower  in  his 
life — he  had  never  thought  of  such  a  thing!  Other 
men  had  been  sending  her  flowers  all  these  years,  and 
much  good  it  had  done  them !  He  would  none  of  such 
poor,  rootless,  perishable  things,  doomed  at  last  to 
the  ash-barrel, — things  that  other  men  had  to  con- 
tent themselves  with  giving  her!  And  to-day  he 
came  empty-handed  to  her  birthday, — yet  with  gifts 
fit  for  a  queen,  though  his  modesty  knew  it  not. 

He  found  Katherine  in  the  garden  with  Archie. 
They  were  early  risers  at  Grandmother  Day's,  and 
the  first  morning  freshness  was  still  upon  garden  bed 
and  bower  as  brother  and  sister  strolled  up  and  down 
the  box-bordered  paths,  examining  the  newly 
opened  roses,  and  praising  Peter  for  their  forward- 
ness. Archie  had  picked  a  lovely  red  one,  and  set  it 
in  her  hair,  where  it  shone  warm  and  sweet  against 
the  darkly  gleaming  coil. 

But  when  they  heard  Tom's  step  upon  the  gravel 
coming  toward  them,  and  when  Archie  saw  his  sis- 
ter's face,  he  remembered  something  he  had  to  say 
to  Peter,  over  in  the  farther  corner  of  the  garden,  and 
he  left  Katherine  to  meet  Tom  alone. 

They  met  in  the  old  grape-arbor  that  arched  the 
path,  fragrant  now  with  an  abundant  blossoming, 
where  the  foliage  was  still  so  sparse  that  the  sunshine 
found  its  way  warm  and  bright  among  the  shadows. 
And  Tom  took  both  her  hands  in  his,  and  looking  into 
the  dear  eyes,  true  in  joy  as  they  had  been  faithful  in 
sorrow,  he  dared  to  draw  her  to  him,  close  and  closer, 

t 


612  Katherine  Day 

and  at  last,  at  last,  he  dared  to  kiss  the  dear,  consent- 
ing lips. 

Now,  when  the  great  fulfilment  was  upon  them, 
they  were  calm  and  sure,  as  nature  is  sure  and  calm, 
when  her  sun  broods  full  upon  the  summer  fields. 

"And  when  shall  it  be?"  Tom  asked,  as  she  drew 
her  head  back,  and  her  eyes  met  his,  with  all  her  heart 
in  them.  "When  shall  it  be?" 

"Whenever  you  will — dearest!" 

"This  very  month?" 

"This  very  month — the  month  when  I  was  born!" 

"And  when  I  am  born  again,"  he  whispered. 

And  presently,  as  they  passed  out  into  the  full  sun- 
shine, they  saw  Grandmother  Day,  standing  under 
the  arching  woodbine  on  the  east  veranda,  shading  her 
eyes  from  the  morning  sun.  Hand  in  hand,  like  little 
children,  they  went  toward  her,  and  pausing,  where 
she  stood  a  step  above  them,  they  looked  up  into  the 
wise,  benignant  face,  like  little  children  asking  an 
indulgence. 

The  grandmother  stooped  and  kissed  them  both — 
but  not  on  the  lips.  It  was  too  soon  for  that,  she 
knew,  for  in  that  hour  her  memory  had  travelled  back 
sixty  years. 

And  even  as  she  bent  above  them,  they  heard  a 
quick  step  across  the  lawn,  and  a  voice  that  meant 
to  be  only  gay,  calling: 

"Save  one  for  me,  Grandmother!  Save  one  for 
me!" 

It  was  Archie's  lips  that  she  kissed;  and,  as  his 
sensitive  face  flushed  a  bit, — for  all  those  kisses  meant 
a  thousand  things  to  him, — Grandmother  Day  said, 
with  a  dim,  far-away  look  in  the  old  eyes  bent  still 
upon  his: 


A   Birthday  613 

"  Do  you  know,  Archie, — you  make  me  think  of 
your  grandfather  to-day!" 

Then  they  all  turned,  and  passed  in  together  at  the 
wide  doorway,  facing  the  open  western  door  beyond, 
where  a  bit  of  a  rose-hung  trellis  showed  in  delicate 
tracery  against  the  sunny  air,  hinting  of  endless  vistas 
of  bloom  and  sunshine,  reaching  all  the  long  way  from 
the  rising  of  the  sun  to  the  yet  distant  setting  thereof. 

THE    END 


A  Wholesome,  Thrilling  Story 

r                               ^ 
Dwellers  in  the  Hills 

By 

Melville  Davisson  Post 

Author  of  "  The  Strange  Schemes  of  Randolph  Mason," 
"The  Man  of  Last  Resort,"  etc. 

k.                                                                                                            J 

SOME  COMMENTS 

"  Who  does  not  love  a  horse  ?     Here  is  a  story  chiefly  about 
horses,  but  not  a  little  about  scenery.     .     .     The  author's  vig- 
orous style  well  reflects  a  man's  mature  but  always  ardent  pas- 
sion for  nature.     Mr.  Post's  virile,  terse,  clean-cut  sentences  are, 
with  appropriateness,  printed  clearly."  —  The  Outlook. 

"  Mr.  Post  has  written  a  story  that  is  fresh  and  wholesome  and 
quite  as  full  of  adventure  as  the  average  reader  can  demand.    .    . 
He  impresses  upon  his  reader  with  consummate  skill  the  strong 
fascinations  that  the  mountains  have  for  men  who,  like  the 
writer,  have  spent  many  years  of  their  lives  among  them."  — 
N.  Y.  Journal. 

"The  '  Dwellers  in  the  Hills'  promises  to  strike  a  new  note 
in  the  fiction  of  our  country."  —  Commercial  Advertiser  . 

"  It  is  evidently  largely  based  upon  personal  experience,  for 
no  one  could  well  evolve  from  his  unaided  imagination  such 
realistic  incidents,  so  strongly  tinged  with  local  color.      The 
dash  for  the  possession  of  the  cattle  .   .  is  vividly  described  and 
is  very  suggestive  of  some  of  the  wild  scenes  in  '  Lorna  Doone.' 
Mr.  Post  has  entered  a  new  field  in  literature  and  we  trust  he 
will  exploit  it  thoroughly."  —  Cambridge  Tribune, 

2d  Impression      Cloth,  12°,  276  pp.,  $1.25 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York                                                         London 

THE  FOREST  SCHOOLMASTER 

By   PETER   ROSEQQER 
Authorized  Translation  by  Frances  E.  Skinner 


A  Human 

Document. 

N.  Y.  Times. 


Unique, 
Strong, 
Interesting. 

Buffalo  Commercial. 


Beautiful, 
Strong. 

Chicago  Times-Herald. 


A/O  better  selection  could  have 
been  made  in  introducing  this 
popular  Austrian  novelist  to  Eng- 
lish readers.  It  is  a  strange  sweet 
tale,  this  story  of  an  isolated  forest 
community  civilized  and  regenerated 
by  the  life  of  one  man. 

A  charming  new  book.  Let  none  who 
care  for  good  literature  fail  to  make  ac- 
quaintance with  the  gentle  schoolmaster 
of  the  forest. — Pittsburg  Post. 

As  an  exposition  of  primitive  human 
nature  the  book  excels. 

Worcester  Spy. 

Beautiful  and  strong,  strange  and 
sombre,  "The  Forest  Schoolmaster" 
belongs  to  the  high  class  literature 

Detroit  Free  Press. 

Curiously  interesting  study, 

N.  Y.  Commercial  Advertiser. 

A  pleasing  rendering  of  the  most 
popular  romance  of  the  well-known 
Austrian  mountains. — Outlook. 


12mo 
Price,  $1.50 


Q.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

PUBLISHERS 


NEW  YORK 
27  and  29  W.  23d  St. 


LONDON 
24  Bedford  St.,  Strand 


A     000118717     8 


